Summary

Every day, in jails and prisons across the United States,
young people under the age of 18 are held in solitary confinement.[1]
They spend 22 or more hours each day alone, usually in a small cell behind a
solid steel door, completely isolated both physically and socially, often for
days, weeks, or even months on end. Sometimes there is a window allowing
natural light to enter or a view of the world outside cell walls. Sometimes it
is possible to communicate by yelling to other inmates, with voices distorted,
reverberating against concrete and metal. Occasionally, they get a book or
bible, and if they are lucky, study materials. But inside this cramped space,
few contours distinguish one hour, one day, week, or one month, from the next.

This bare social and physical existence makes many young
people feel doomed and abandoned, or in some cases, suicidal, and can lead to
serious physical and emotional consequences. Adolescents in solitary
confinement describe cutting themselves with staples or razors, hallucinations,
losing control of themselves, or losing touch with reality while isolated. They
talk about only being allowed to exercise in small metal cages, alone, a few
times a week; about being prevented from going to school or participating in
any activity that promotes growth or change. Some say the hardest part is not
being able to hug their mother or father.

The solitary confinement of adults can cause serious pain
and suffering and can violate international human rights and US constitutional
law. But the potential damage to young people, who do not have the maturity of
an adult and are at a particularly vulnerable, formative stage of life, is much
greater.

Experts assert that young people are psychologically unable
to handle solitary confinement with the resilience of an adult. And, because
they are still developing, traumatic experiences like solitary confinement may
have a profound effect on their chance to rehabilitate and grow. Solitary
confinement can exacerbate, or make more likely, short and long-term mental
health problems. The most common deprivation that accompanies solitary
confinement, denial of physical exercise, is physically harmful to adolescents’
health and well-being.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
estimate that in 2011, more than 95,000 youth were held in prisons and jails. A
significant number of these facilities use solitary confinement—for days,
weeks, months, or even years—to punish, protect, house, or treat some of
the young people who are held there. Solitary confinement of youth is, today, a
serious and widespread problem in the United States.

This situation is a relatively recent development. It has
only been in the last 30 years that a majority of jurisdictions around the
country have adopted various charging and sentencing laws and practices that
have resulted in substantial numbers of adolescents serving time in adult jails
and prisons. These laws and policies have largely ignored the need to treat
young people charged and sentenced as if adults with special consideration for
their age, development, and rehabilitative potential.

Young people can be guilty of horrible crimes with
significant consequences for victims, their families, and their communities.
The state has a duty to ensure accountability for serious crimes, and to
protect the public. But states also have special responsibilities not to treat
young people in ways that can permanently harm their development and
rehabilitation, regardless of their culpability.

This report describes the needless suffering and misery that
solitary confinement frequently inflicts on young people; examines the
justifications that state and prison officials offer for using solitary
confinement; and offers alternatives to solitary confinement in the housing and
management of adolescents. The report draws on in-person interviews and
correspondence with more than 125 individuals who were held in jails or prisons
while under age 18 in 19 states, and with officials who manage jails or prisons
in 10 states, as well as quantitative data and the advice of experts on the
challenges of detaining and managing adolescents.

This report shows that the solitary confinement of adolescents
in adult jails and prisons is not exceptional or transient. Specifically, the
report finds that:

Young people are subjected to solitary confinement in jails and
prisons nationwide, and often for weeks and months.

When subjected to solitary confinement, adolescents are
frequently denied access to treatment, services, and programming adequate to
meet their medical, psychological, developmental, social, and rehabilitative
needs.

Solitary confinement of young people often seriously harms their
mental and physical health, as well as their development.

Solitary confinement of adolescents is unnecessary. There are
alternative ways to address the problems—whether disciplinary,
administrative, protective, or medical—which officials typically cite as
justifications for using solitary confinement, while taking into account the
rights and special needs of adolescents.

Adult jails and prisons generally use solitary confinement
in the same way for adolescents and adults. Young people are held in solitary confinement
to punish them when they break the rules, such as those against talking back,
possessing contraband, or fighting; they are held in solitary confinement to
protect them from adults or from one another; they are held in solitary
confinement because officials do not know how else to manage them; and
sometimes, officials use solitary confinement to medically treat them.

There is no question that incarcerating teenagers who have
been accused or found responsible for crimes can be extremely challenging.
Adolescents can be defiant, and hurt themselves and others. Sometimes,
facilities may need to use limited periods or forms of segregation and
isolation to protect young people from other prisoners or themselves. But using
solitary confinement harms young people in ways that are different, and more
profound, than if they were adults.

Many adolescents reported being subjected to solitary
confinement more than once while they were under age 18. Forty-nine
individuals—more than a third—of the seventy-seven interviewed and
fifty with whom we corresponded described spending a total of between one and
six months in solitary confinement before their eighteenth birthday.

Adolescents spoke eloquently about solitary confinement, and
how it compounded the stresses of being in jail or prison—often for the
first time—without family support. They talked about the disorientation
of finding themselves, and feeling, doubly alone.

Many described struggling with one or more serious mental
health problems during their time in solitary confinement and of sometimes
having difficulty accessing psychological services or support to cope with
these difficulties. Some young people, particularly those with mental
disabilities (sometimes called psychosocial disabilities or mental illness, and
usually associated with long-term mental health problems), struggled more than
others. Several young people talked about attempting suicide when in isolation.

Adolescents in solitary confinement also experienced direct
physical and developmental harm, a consequence of being denied physical
exercise or adequate nutrition. Thirty-eight of those interviewed said they had
experienced at least one period in solitary confinement when they could not go
outside. A few talked about losing weight and going to bed hungry.

The report finds that young people in solitary confinement
are deprived of contact with their families, access to education and to
programming, and other services necessary for their growth, development, and
rehabilitation. Twenty-one of the young people interviewed said they could not
visit with loved ones during at least one period of solitary confinement.
Twenty-five said they spent at least one period of time in solitary confinement
during which they were not provided any educational programming at all. Sixteen
described sitting alone in their cell for days on end without even a book or
magazine to read.

But as a number of jail and prison officials recognize,
solitary confinement is costly, ineffective, and harmful. There are other means
to handle the challenges of detaining and managing adolescents. Young people
can be better managed in specialized facilities, designed to house them,
staffed with specially trained personnel, and organized to encourage positive
behaviors. Punitive schemes can be reorganized to stress immediate and
proportionate interventions and to strictly limit and regulate short-term
isolation as a rare exception.

Solitary confinement of youth is itself a serious human
rights violation and can constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment
under international human rights law. In addition, the conditions that compound
the harm of solitary confinement (such as lack of psychological care, physical
exercise, family contact, and education) often constitute independent,
concurrent, and serious human rights violations. Solitary confinement cannot be
squared with the special status of adolescents under US constitutional law
regarding crime and punishment. While not unusual, it turns the detention of
young people in adult jails and prisons into an experience of unquestionable
cruelty.

It is time for the United States
to abolish the solitary confinement of young people. State and federal
lawmakers, as well as other appropriate officials, should immediately embark on
a review of the laws, policies, and practices that result in young people being
held in solitary confinement, with the goal of definitively ending this
practice. Rather than being banished to grow up locked down in isolation,
incarcerated adolescents must be treated with humanity and dignity and
guaranteed the ability to grow, to be rehabilitated, and to reenter society.

Key Recommendations

To the US Federal Government
and/or State Governments

Prohibit
the solitary confinement of youth under age 18.

Prohibit
the housing of adolescents with adults, or in jails and prisons designed to
house adults.

Strictly
limit and regulate all forms of segregation and isolation of young people.

Monitor and
report on the segregation and isolation of adolescents.

Ratify
human rights treaties protecting young people without reservations.

Methodology

This report is the product of a joint initiative—the
Aryeh Neier fellowship—between Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union to strengthen respect for human rights in the United States.

This report is based on interviews and correspondence
undertaken between December 2011 and July 2012 with 127 individuals who were
detained in jail or prison while under age 18 in Alabama, California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi,
Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin,
and Virginia. Of those, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union interviewed in person 77 individuals who, collectively, had been held at
more than 50 jails and prisons in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New York and
Pennsylvania while under age 18. Of these, 66 were male and 11 were female; 57
of them were between 18 and 25 years old at the time of the interviews; 20 were
under age 18. Of the 50 with whom Human Rights Watch corresponded, all were
male; 24 were between the ages of 18 and 25, and 10 were under age 18.

In selecting jurisdictions for focused research, Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union prioritized states that
consistently report holding youth under age 18 in adult jails and prisons, and
charging young people as if they are adults. Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union identified individuals who had been subjected to
solitary confinement in those jurisdictions through outreach to family members;
contact with defense attorneys and advocacy networks; and through an
advertisement in Prison Legal News (which has broad circulation in jails and in
prisons). Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also
identified some individuals by writing to or seeking to interview all
adolescents under age 18 at a particular facility or within a particular
Department of Rehabilitation or Correction; all young people convicted of
certain offenses likely to be associated with isolation (such as battery by a
prisoner, assault on a corrections officer, or throwing or expelling bodily
fluids at or towards a public safety worker); or young people serving
particularly long sentences, such as life without parole.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
were not able to conduct interviews in every state that confines adolescents in
adult jails and prisons, nor in every county in the states visited. Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union did not seek individual administrative,
disciplinary, or medical records for most individuals interviewed.

All individuals interviewed about their experience provided
informed consent to participate in this research. Interviews in jails and
prisons were conducted in private, with no jail or prison staff within earshot;
interviews outside of jails and prisons were also conducted in private. For
some of the interviews, the Human Rights Watch/American Civil Liberties Union
researcher in charge of the project was accompanied by an attorney (including
sometimes the individual’s defense attorney), social worker, or NGO
partner whose presence as an observer was explained to the interviewee. When
accompanied by others, the Human Rights Watch/American Civil Liberties Union
researcher led the questioning, using substantially the same semi-structured
questionnaire for all interviews with those who had been held in jail or
prison. The researcher repeatedly assured interviewees that they could end the
interview at any time or decline to answer any and all questions. Also, the
researcher gave no incentives to interviewees and took great care to avoid
re-traumatizing them. One individual declined to be interviewed, and one
individual refused to allow his or her testimony to be used for this research.

Some interviewees asked that their names be used in this
report so they could more directly participate in bringing attention to their
personal experience. But due to concerns over the safety of the many
interviewees who did not want their identity disclosed, Human Rights Watch and
the American Civil Liberties Union decided to use pseudonyms to disguise the
identity of all interviewees who were held in jail or in prison, and of
individuals whose cases Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union learned of through attorneys or family members. In most cases, Human
Rights Watch has also withheld certain other identifying information to protect
an individual’s privacy and safety.

Human Rights Watch sent surveys regarding the challenges of
detaining and managing youth and the use of isolation to more than 590 county
jail facilities and received responses from or interviewed, collectively, more
than 98 county jail officials in Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts,
Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Human Rights
Watch also interviewed or corresponded with state prison officials in Colorado,
Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction refused
Human Rights Watch’s request to interview young people under their care
due to the department’s “long-standing practice not to provide
media access to [the department’s] incarcerated juveniles” and
because “there [were] legal concerns about whether the juveniles can
consent to interviews.”[2] It also
refused to allow us to privately interview inmates who had entered its care
while under age 18 who were now adults, stating that it would only allow
interviews of inmates who were screened “to determine if they are
eligible and appropriate for participation” if “the Public
Information Officer at [each] facility [were] to be present during th[ose]
interviews.”[3]
Following our standard research methodology in situations of confinement, we
declined to submit to official monitoring or selection of interviews.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections also denied Human
Rights Watch’s request to interview individuals in their care. It cited
concerns that interviewing young people identified through defense counsel and public
records, “may introduce bias” in the results; that, if the intent
was to obtain information about county facilities, interviews should be
conducted “when the subject is in a county jail facility”; that the
department would not permit questioning about experiences in county facilities
without “written approval from the respective Jail Administration or
Sheriff”; and that it would not permit interviews without prior approval
of questions to be asked (about prolonged isolation) and any other
“information necessary to take into account possible issues that could
lead to any possible negative effects that the interview may have on the
subject’s mental health status.”[4]

Human Rights Watch interviewed officials at the US
Department of Justice and state officials charged with collecting data and
monitoring compliance with federal law, such as the Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention Act.

Finally, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union interviewed dozens (and had background discussions with scores) of third
parties with relevant expertise or experience dealing with the consequences of
the solitary confinement of adolescents, including prisoner’s family
members; victims of crime and their family members; attorneys; as well as medical,
corrections, educational, and psychological experts.

This report, especially
Appendix 1, contains substantial statistical data. Most of the descriptive
statistics utilized in this report were extracted from three Bureau of Justice
Statistics (BJS) data sources: the annual Prisoners in [Year] reports; the
annual Jail Inmates at Midyear reports; and the raw Survey of Jails data files,
which are used to generate the Jail Inmates at Midyear report. Further
information on the statistical methodology used may be found in Appendix 1.

I. Background: Kids in an Adult System

[C]hildren are constitutionally different from adults
… [J]uveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects for
reform … [and] are less deserving of the most severe punishments …
[C]hildren have a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility[;]
… [c]hildren are more vulnerable . . . to negative influences and outside
pressures[;] … [a]nd … a child’s character is not as well
formed as an adult’s.

For much of the last century, people under the age of 18 who
came into conflict with the law in the United States were detained (when
necessary), tried or adjudicated, and held accountable in the juvenile justice
system. In rare cases, and if in the best interests of the child and the
public, juvenile court judges could waive a delinquency case into the adult
criminal justice system. But this was far from common.[5]

Though they have since declined, in the late 1980s and
through the mid-1990s, rates of some categories of juvenile crime, particularly
serious violent crime, increased significantly.[6] Concern
about this development led to a proliferation of new legal mechanisms for
subjecting children to criminal trial and punishment as if they were adults.[7]
The stated goal of most of these policies was deterrence through retributive
punishment: “adult time for adult crime.”[8]

As a result, each year tens of thousands of adolescents are
now treated as adults. How young people come to be charged, detained, and
punished as adults, however, is a function of a complex thicket of state and
federal law and policy. There is no single approach within
or among states. Yet the consequences for young people treated the same as
adults are profound.

Youth
Charged as if Adults

Nationally, young people held in adult facilities are
charged and convicted of offenses ranging from drug and property crimes to the
most serious violent crimes. The most common mechanisms for imposing
“adult time for adult crime” include offense-based exclusion from
the juvenile justice system, prosecutorial “direct-file” of youth
cases in the adult system, and “once an adult always an adult”
laws.[9] For many
young people, entering the adult criminal justice system is a path of no
return, as not all states have mechanisms to transfer or waive jurisdiction back
to the juvenile system, or to impose a blended sentence of punishments in both
the juvenile and adult systems.[10] Yet
some evidence suggests that many adolescents charged as if adults are not
actually sentenced to time in prison.[11]

Racial and socioeconomic disparities are pervasive within
the criminal justice system. As Human Rights Watch has documented, in
California, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, black adolescents are
significantly more likely to be serving a sentence of life without parole
than white adolescents.[12]
Other studies have found that minority adolescents receive harsher treatment
than similarly-situated white adolescents at every stage of the criminal
justice system.[13]
Within the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, young people of color
are disproportionately represented at every stage, from arrest to sentencing.[14]

People with scant financial means are also often unable to
afford bail, and as a result end up spending lengthy periods in pre-trial
detention.[15]
Consequently, economically disadvantaged adolescents, including those who are
never convicted, can endure substantial adult jail time. These racial and
socioeconomic disparities are interconnected: in New York City in 2010,
blacks and Hispanics constituted 89 percent of all pretrial detainees held on
bail of $1,000 or less.[16]

Many of the young people interviewed for this report were
accused, tried, or convicted for serious crimes, even homicide. Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed more than a dozen
young people serving life without parole for murder or felony murder.[17]
But Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also interviewed
young people arrested, tried, or convicted of non-violent offenses, drug, and
property crimes. For example, of the 26 young people interviewed in Florida
prisons, five were convicted of non-violent offenses, such as burglary or drug
possession.[18]

Yet, regardless of their conduct, it is well established
that adolescents have a potential for development and rehabilitation that is
distinct from that of adults. In addition, adolescents deprived of their
liberty have significant developmental needs and rights that are distinct from
those of adults.

Youth Are Different

The cornerstone principle of the juvenile justice system in
the United States is the idea that young people are different from adults. This
is a reflection of psychological and physiological facts about how adolescents
and their needs grow and change, as they become adults; it is also a principle
of international and domestic law. The juvenile justice system seeks to
rehabilitate young people and facilitate their development so that they may be
reintegrated into society. The adult criminal justice system, with its focus on
punishment, does not unequivocally prioritize rehabilitation, though the law of
some states and international human rights law mandate it.[19]

Young people have needs that differ in nature and degree
from those of adults because they are still developing physically and
psychologically. These include specific physical needs for exercise and a
balanced diet; as well as special psychological, social, and emotional needs.
“As a transitional period,” reports one study, “adolescence
is marked by rapid and dramatic [individual] change in the realms of biology,
cognition, emotion, and interpersonal relationships and by equally impressive
transformations in the major contexts in which children spend time.”[20]

Physiological
Differences and Needs

During adolescence, the body changes significantly,
including through the development of secondary sexual characteristics. Boys and
girls gain height, weight, and muscle mass, as well as pubic and body hair;
girls develop breasts and begin menstrual periods, and boys’ genitals
grow and their voices change.[21] The
American Academy of Pediatrics therefore recommends a spectrum of
age-differentiated examinations and assessments for adolescents related to
physical, dental, and vision care.[22] This
includes developmental screenings (and health care needs) that differ from
early, middle, to late adolescence.[23]

Recent scientific findings revealing that the human brain
goes through dramatic structural growth during teen years have overturned
earlier assumptions regarding the completion of brain development at early
adolescence.[24] These
findings have significant implications for our understanding of
teenagers’ volition and culpability, their capacity to change and
develop, and their psychological needs.

The most dramatic difference between the brains of teens and
young adults is the development of the frontal lobe.[25]
The frontal lobe is responsible for cognitive processing, such as planning,
strategizing, and organizing thoughts and actions. Researchers have determined
that one area of the frontal lobe, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is among
the last brain regions to mature, not reaching adult dimensions until a person
is in his or her twenties.[26] This
part of the brain is linked to “the ability to inhibit impulses, weigh
consequences of decisions, prioritize, and strategize.”[27]
As a result, teens’ decision-making processes are shaped by impulsivity,
immaturity, and an under-developed ability to appreciate consequences and
resist environmental pressures.

The malleability of an adolescents’ brain development
implies that teens through their twenties may be particularly amenable to
change and rehabilitation as they grow older and attain adult levels of
development.[28] This
malleability also raises questions about the effects of stress and trauma on
adolescent development during this formative period.

As detailed in section II, the particular physical and
psychological characteristics of adolescents make solitary confinement
particularly detrimental to healthy development and rehabilitation.

Adult Detention Regimes

In the United States, many of those accused or convicted of
criminal offenses are held in jails or prisons. Prisons generally hold only
those convicted of crimes and sentenced to more than a year of incarceration.
Based on the available data, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union estimate that in the last 5 years, more than 93,000 young
people under age 18 were held in adult jails and that more than 2,200 young
people under age 18 were held in adult prisons every year (see Appendix 1 for
detailed information and additional numbers). While some young people turn 18
before they enter prison, others are not sentenced to spend time in prison,
making the high numbers of young people held in jail particularly alarming.[29]

State Law and Practice - Jails

Once charged in the adult criminal justice system,
adolescents in many states are taken to adult jails.[30]
Some states, such as Wisconsin, mandate that all individuals charged in
criminal court be detained in adult jail pre-trial.[31]
Once detained in adult facilities, some states require that young people under
18 be kept separate from adults in pre-trial facilities (often mandating
separation by “sight and sound”).[32] Other
states leave it to individual facilities to sort out how and whether young
people need to be protected. Some facilities separate young people of certain
ages from adults. In some jails in Michigan (where 17 year olds are considered
adults in the criminal justice system), for example, 16 year olds are generally
separated from adults while 17 year olds are held with adults.[33]

Federal law—the Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA)—creates financial
incentives for states to treat young people differently from adults, including
by diverting young people subject to the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice
system (and certain categories of misdemeanants) from adult facilities.[34] Adolescents who are protected by the federal law must
either never be held in adult facilities (in the case of status offenders[35]) or be moved from adult facilities within 6 hours (and
must be sight and sound separated from adult inmates while there).[36] However, this law is not currently interpreted to cover
adolescents who are charged with felonies in the adult system, leaving youth
protected only by state law.[37]

State Law and Practice -
Prisons

In most states, young people who are convicted as if adults
and sentenced to more than a year of incarceration are then sent to prison.[38]
Some state prison systems have special “youthful offender”
facilities that serve some proportion of the youth admitted to prison who are
under a certain age (such as under the age of 22 in Pennsylvania).[39]
In some states, such as Florida, judges and corrections officials can designate
young people as “youthful offenders” for the purposes of admission
to these specialized programs; in other states, young people convicted of some
serious offenses are sometimes excluded from eligibility.[40]
In some states, a portion of young people under age 18 in the prison system are
held in the general adult population.

In some states, adult criminal courts have the authority to
blend the sentences of young people convicted of crimes such that they begin
their sentence in the state system designed to house juveniles, but can be
transferred into adult prison in certain circumstances. The federal government,
by contrast, makes arrangements to hold all adolescents post-conviction in
facilities overseen by the relevant juvenile justice system.[41]

Risks and Harm to Youth in
Adult Facilities

Doing time in jails and prisons is hard for anyone. Jails
and prisons are often tense and overcrowded facilities in which all prisoners struggle
to maintain their self-respect and emotional equilibrium in the face of
violence, exploitation, extortion, and lack of privacy; stark limitations on
family and community contacts; and few opportunities for meaningful education,
work, or other productive activities. But doing time in jail or prison is
particularly difficult for young people, who often constitute a very small
proportion of the population.

Adult jails and prisons that house adolescents face
significant obstacles to keeping adolescents safe and ensuring that they
receive developmentally appropriate services—even the limited services
that some states mandate by law—when using staff trained and facilities
designed to manage adults. Jail and prison recreation yards are designed for
adults; doctors and mental health professionals are rarely specialized to treat
children. The lack of age-appropriate services and facilities is further
compounded by the limited availability of education or rehabilitative
programming available in jails and prisons.

Young people held in the same facility as adults face a very
high risk of physical or sexual abuse.[42] Studies
suggest that adolescents who enter adult prison while they are still below the
age of 18 are “five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as
likely to be beaten by staff and fifty percent more likely to be attacked with
a weapon than minors in juvenile facilities.”[43]
Some have argued that the increased exposure of young people to violence in
adult facilities may increase the likelihood that they will exhibit violent
behavior upon release.[44] While
causation is difficult to establish, some data suggests that recidivism rates
are significantly higher when young people are held with adults. A report
published by the Centers for Disease Control found that “[a]vailable
evidence indicates that transfer to the adult criminal justice system typically
increases rather than decreases rates of violence among transferred
youth.”[45]

II. How Solitary Confinement Harms Youth

Jails and prisons across the United States commonly respond
to prison or inmate management challenges by segregating individuals from the
general population, often through prolonged physical and social isolation, for
hours, days, weeks, or even years. Isolation for 22 hours per day or more, and
for one or more days, fits the generally accepted definition of solitary
confinement, and this term is used throughout this report.[46]

Solitary confinement is not a practice that jails and
prisons restrict to adults; the solitary confinement of young people is not
exceptional or transient. On the contrary, it is a serious and widespread
problem.

Jail or prison officials frequently subject young people to
solitary confinement to achieve one of three goals: to punish young people
(this is often called disciplinary segregation); to manage them, either because
their classification is deemed to require isolation (often called
administrative segregation) or because they are considered particularly
vulnerable to abuse (often called protective custody); or to treat inmates,
such as after a threatened or attempted suicide (this is often called
seclusion).

The conditions that inmates experience in solitary
confinement vary little between different forms of segregation, and from county
to county, prison to prison, or state to state. [47]
The different forms of solitary confinement are discussed in more detail in
section III.

Young people repeatedly described their experience in
solitary confinement in the most haunting of terms, as in the case of one young
woman in Michigan:

I think [the cell] would … look like any other cell.
You know, a box. There was a bed—the slab. It was concrete.… There
was a stainless steel toilet/sink combo…. The door was solid, without a
food slot or window…. It looked like a basement because all I could see
was brick walls. There was no window at all … I couldn’t see a
clock … the only way I really associated any kind of time—I broke
down time: morning, afternoon, evening. I broke it down: breakfast, lunch, and
dinner.… [I felt] doomed, like I was being banished … like you have
the plague or that you are the worst thing on earth. Like you are set apart
[from] everything else. I guess [I wanted to] feel like I was part of the human
race—not like some animal.[48]

Another, in Florida, said,

The only thing left to do is go crazy—just sit and
talk to the walls.… I catch myself [talking to the walls] every now and
again. It’s starting to become a habit because I have nothing else to do.
I can’t read a book. I work out and try to make the best of it. But there
is no best. Sometimes I go crazy and can’t even control my anger
anymore.… I can’t even get [out of solitary confinement] early if I
do better, so it is frustrating and I just lose it. Screaming, throwing stuff
around.… I feel like I am alone, like no one cares about
me—sometimes I feel like, why am I even living?[49]

While outside of the scope of this report, public and
press reporting suggests facilities in the juvenile justice system also use a
range of segregation and isolation practices to detain and manage
adolescents, including solitary confinement.[50] Segregation and
isolation practices in juvenile facilities are sometimes divided between
short-term, immediate sanctions to interrupt what officials deem to be
juveniles’ “acting out” behavior and longer-term,
administrative or disciplinary isolation. All best practice standards for
juvenile facilities propose maximum limits on various forms of isolation that
are far below the durations of solitary confinement experienced by young
people in adult jails and prisons interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union.[51]

Yet lengthy solitary confinement still occurs in juvenile
facilities. An audit of one California Division of Juvenile Justice facility,
completed in 2011, found that of 93 young people placed in restricted
housing, 16 were held for a total of 78 days, during which they were only
provided an average of 74 out-of-room minutes each day.[52]
The segregation and isolation of young people in juvenile facilities,
particularly when it constitutes solitary confinement, also raises serious
human rights concerns.[53]

Solitary confinement, and many of the deprivations that are
typically associated with it, has a distinct and particularly profound impact
on young people, often doing serious damage to their development and
psychological and physical well-being. Because of the special vulnerability and
needs of adolescents, solitary confinement can be a particularly cruel and
harmful practice when applied to them.

While subjected to solitary confinement, young people
reported to Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union that they
were deprived of a significant level of access to: physical and mental health
care services; recreation or physical exercise; education, reading, or writing
materials; visits, calls, correspondence, or contact with family members and
loved ones; and other rehabilitative and developmentally-appropriate
programming. Young people reported very similar experiences regardless of the
purpose for which solitary confinement was imposed.

Psychological Harm

The use of solitary confinement risks causing or
exacerbating mental disabilities or other serious mental health problems in
adolescents.[54]

Studies have found that numerous adults who have no history
of mental health problems develop psychological symptoms in solitary
confinement.[55] While
many of those studies are open to questions about the mental health status of
individuals before entering solitary confinement, there is agreement that
solitary confinement can cause or exacerbate mental health problems.[56]

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
are not aware of any studies that look specifically at the effects of prolonged
solitary confinement on adolescents. But many experts on child and adolescent
psychology said that prolonged isolation, including in conditions as
restrictive as solitary confinement, can cause or exacerbate mental
disabilities or other serious mental health problems.[57]

Solitary confinement is stressful.[58]
It “engender[s] significant levels of anxiety and discomfort.”[59]
And young people have fewer psychological resources than adults do to help them
manage the stress, anxiety and discomfort they experience in solitary
confinement.[60]
For many adolescents in prison, developmental immaturity is compounded by
mental disabilities and histories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. These factors,
though experienced differently by different individuals, can exacerbate the
mental health effects of solitary confinement.

Many of the young people interviewed spoke in harrowing
detail about struggling with one or more of a range of serious mental health
problems during their time in solitary. They talked about thoughts of suicide
and self-harm; visual and auditory hallucinations; feelings of depression;
acute anxiety; shifting sleep patterns; nightmares and traumatic memories; and
uncontrollable anger or rage. Some young people, particularly those who
reported having been identified as having a mental disability before entering
solitary confinement, struggled more than others. Fifteen young people
described cutting or harming themselves or thinking about or attempting suicide
one or more times while in solitary confinement.

Not all young people reported experiencing significant
mental health problems in solitary confinement. However, these accounts vividly
portray the psychological pain and suffering that can be brought on by time in
solitary confinement.

Trying to Cope

Many young people described wishing they could mentally
escape from solitary confinement, and using a variety of mechanisms to
dissociate from their experience. Some developed imaginary friends; some used
make-believe or other imaginings to dissociate.

Alyssa E. spent four months in protective solitary
confinement when she was sixteen. She said,

It may sound weird but I had a friend in there that I would
talk to. She wasn’t there, but it was my mind. And I would talk to her
and she would respond.… She [would tell] positive things to me. It was
me, my mind, I knew, but it was telling me positive things.… It was a
strange experience.[61]

Carter P., who entered prison at 14, described using
make-believe and games to help himself through the first of many times he was
held in punitive solitary confinement:

I felt like I was going mad. Nothing but a wall to stare
at. This was my tenth wall to stare at in my detention. I started to see
pictures in the little bumps in the walls. Eventually, I said the hell with it
and started acting insane. [I] made little characters with my hands and acted
out [video] games I used to play on the out[side]—Dragon Ball Z, Sonic,
Zelda—stuff like that. The [corrections officers] would stare at
me—looking at me like I’m crazy.… I started talking to myself
and answering myself. Talking gibberish. I even made my own
language—[corrections officers] didn’t know what I was talking
about.[62]

Another common strategy to escape solitary confinement was
sleep. Jordan E., who reported spending nearly a year in protective solitary
confinement when he was 15, described his focus on trying to sleep:

I daydreamed, I slept a bunch. That’s how I would
handle 20, 18 hours a day. If I wasn’t sleeping, I was in bed trying to
sleep. Get up, eat, back to bed—lay there and lay there, trying to sleep.[63]

In spite of their best efforts, many felt that in the
struggle to cope with solitary confinement, they faced a losing battle with
themselves. As Marvin Q., who spent a week in protective solitary confinement
when he was 17, described it,

I wish I had better words—I was really, really
lonely.… I [would] try to put covers on my head—make … like
it’s not there. Try to dissociate myself … I don’t think they
should do that to a juvenile. It’s impossible for any person to cope with
anything like that. I couldn’t help myself.[64]

Anxiety, Rage, and Insomnia

Young people described a variety of mental health problems
associated with their solitary confinement. Some said they had their first
anxiety attack in solitary confinement; others said they lost themselves to an
uncontrollable rage. Several had trouble sleeping. For some, these problems
were all experienced simultaneously. Phillip J., who spent approximately 113
days in solitary confinement (including a single period of 60 days) before his
eighteenth birthday, said,

I was stressed. At first I would sleep all day. I would
feel myself getting angry or aggressive. I would try to work out or do
something, but I was literally going insane in that little spot. The
claustrophobia set in and I would feel I was having anxiety attacks and would
go over and get water and try and calm down. I would hear the slightest noise
and be on guard.[65]

Another young person described mood swings while in solitary
confinement. Rafael O. said, “I [would] get depressed, if anything, then
have extreme anxiety and feel like I [was] hyper-active, and then get depressed
again.”[66]

Parents explained that their loved ones’ struggle was
visible during visits (when they were allowed). One woman described visiting
her grandchild, whom she identified as having a mental disability, while he was
in solitary confinement:

His mind is going and coming when he is locked up by
himself all the time.… He is jumpy. He is startled when you talk to
him.… He can’t be still—like a nervous person!… He [wa]s
always biting on his hands and wrist the whole time I talked to him. Biting his
fingers and wrists [and] both hands. He was also grinding his teeth. You can
[sic] see his jaw constantly moving. He never did that before.[67]

Some youth experienced anger or rage that they could not
control. As one said, “All I would want to do is fight.”[68]
Another said, “I couldn’t sleep. I was having anger. My anger was
crazy. I was having outbursts.”[69] And a
third said, “It makes you worse. It really brings the beast out of you to
be in there stressing. You start saying, ‘Fuck everything.’ …
[It] makes you more wild; makes you feel like a lion in a cage.”[70]
Kyle B. wrote,

The loneliness made me depressed and the depression caused
me to be angry [sic], leading to a desire to displace the agony by hurting
others. I felt an inner pain not of this world.… I allowed the pain that
was inflicted upon [me] from [my] isolation placement build up while in
isolation. And at the first opportunity of release (whether I was being released
from isolation or receiving a cell-mate) I erupted like a volcano, directing
violent forces at anyone in my path.[71]

Adolescents who had trouble coping or sleeping were
sometimes identified by mental health staff and prescribed medication. A
number of young people described being prescribed sleeping medication. Mason
P., who had spent the four days before he was interviewed in administrative
solitary confinement, said,

I don’t sleep. They gave me sleeping pills
‘cause I can’t sleep. I worry a lot.... I started taking them
three days ago. They asked if I felt like killing myself or hurting somebody,
I said, “Naw,” but they told me if I was worrying they said they
were going to give me something.[72]

A Philadelphia County Prison Official observed that many
youth held in solitary confinement in the county jail were prescribed
sleeping aids and other prescription medications while in isolation:
“It was a way [for them] to cope and reduce anxiety.”[73]

But some experts question the practice of treating sleep
problems directly. Dr. Cheryl Wills, a child psychiatrist who has diagnosed
youth in juvenile and adult facilities, argues that poor sleep patterns are
often indicative of another underlying problem:

I am not a proponent of medicating sleep … the
question is, what is it related to—a symptom of depression?
Post-traumatic stress? ADHD? So you figure out what is going on and treat
sleep as a part of the picture.… There are medications that help youth
if they have issues, but you must treat it as a whole package, as part of a
treatable diagnosis.… You don’t want to medicate a youth unless
he or she really needs it.[74]

Treating sleeplessness associated with mental health
problems or disabilities is particularly complicated when those problems may
themselves be caused or exacerbated by being held in solitary confinement.

Being alone with their thoughts, and especially thoughts of
home, made it difficult for them to sleep:

I don’t even want to sleep here because I can’t
wait till I get home. Every night before I go to sleep I think about home and
can’t sleep. I’m up until at least 5 a.m. which causes other
outbursts because I’m just thinking.[75]

Inability to sleep can itself cause or exacerbate other
mental health problems, and can also indicate an underlying mental disability.

Cutting and Self-Harm

In addition to the psychological pain and suffering that
young people reported experiencing while in solitary confinement, some young
people reported that they cut or otherwise physically harmed themselves. Among
youth in jails and prisons, evidence suggests that this problem affects girls
at an even higher rate than boys.[76] We
found both young men and young women who reported harming themselves in
solitary confinement. Melanie H., who spent three months in protective solitary
confinement when she was fifteen years old, described how cutting helped her
cope with feelings of loss she experienced when alone with her thoughts:

I became a cutter [in solitary confinement]. I like to take
staples and carve letters and stuff in my arm. Each letter means something to
me. It is something I had lost. Like the first one was a [letter], which is the
first letter in my mother’s name. And every day I would apologize to her.
I don’t know—I felt like I had a burden I couldn’t carry and
it made me feel good.[77]

Other young women described using self-harm as a way to call
for help or get the attention of officials. Alyssa E. said,

Me? I cut myself. I started doing it because it is the only release of my pain.
I’d see the blood and I’d be happy.… I did it with staples,
not razors. When I see the blood and it makes me want to keep going. I showed
the officers and they didn’t do anything.… I wanted [the staff] to
talk to me. I wanted them to understand what was going on with me.[78]

Psychological experts with experience monitoring health care
in adult and juvenile facilities described self-harm as a typical reaction to
isolation and an effort to force interaction with others. One psychological
expert said,

I think the biggest detriment [in solitary confinement] is
lack of interaction. So typically youth become desperate for any interaction.
So you see the incidents of self-harm increase. They find ways to hurt
themselves or hurt somebody else. Because it is more difficult to withstand
longer periods of isolation than an adult … they are going to find ways
to hurt themselves or somebody else or cause problems.[79]

Suicidal Thoughts and Attempts: “The
death-oriented side of life”

Twelve young people told Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union in detail about times that they thought about or
attempted suicide while in solitary confinement. Experts with experience
advising jails and prisons on suicide prevention argue that it is
uncontroversial that suicide and solitary confinement are correlated:

[N]o one disagrees that the suicide rate is higher for
youth in both juvenile facilities, adult jails, and adult prisons.… I
think it is safe to say that youth in an adult jail and prison are at higher
risk for suicide and youth in isolation in those facilities would also be at
higher risk.[80]

Paul K., who spent 60 days in protective solitary
confinement when he was 14, described how he came to want to end his life:

The hardest thing about isolation is that you are trapped
in such a small room by yourself. There is nothing to do so you start talking
to yourself and getting lost in your own little world. It is crushing. You get
depressed and wonder if it is even worth living. Your thoughts turn over to the
more death-oriented side of life.… I want[ed] to kill myself.[81]

Twelve young people told Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union about having either thought about or attempted suicide
while in solitary confinement; some had attempted suicide before they were in
jail or prison; some described witnessing attempted or successful suicides. Luz
M. said suicidal thoughts came immediately after she went into solitary
confinement:

I just felt I wanted to die, like there was no way
out—I was stressed out. I hung up [tried to hang myself] the first day. I
took a sheet and tied it to my light and they came around.… The officer,
when she was doing rounds, found me. She was banging on the window: “Are
you alive? Are you alive?” I could hear her, but I felt like I was going
to die. I couldn’t breathe.[82]

Some young people have committed suicide while in solitary
confinement.[83]
According to a national expert on suicides in juvenile facilities, jails, and
prisons, the evidence suggests that most suicides in juvenile (not adult)
facilities occur while youth are confined alone to their room.[84]

Struggling with Mental Disabilities and Past Trauma

Many adolescents face the
additional challenge of coping with a mental disability while in solitary
confinement.[85]

Studies
suggest that youth under age 18 enter the adult criminal justice system with
high rates of mental disabilities.[86] Approximately 48 percent of adolescents
between the ages of 16 and 18 in New York City Department of Corrections
custody in FY2012, for example, had a diagnosed mental disability.[87]
But some mental disabilities do not manifest until youth reach their teen
years.[88]

Some young people in solitary
confinement likely struggle to cope simultaneously with the psychological
vulnerabilities associated with their developing brains and the onset of mental
disabilities, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As one expert,
Dr. Cheryl Wills, a child psychiatrist with experience diagnosing youth in
juvenile and adult facilities, described,

Sometimes youth will have psychosis in flashes. It will
come out in the stress of being in [isolation] but not with other youth. I have
personally seen youth who were not psychotic and you put them in [isolation]
and they are psychotic. Was it going to happen? Yes. Did it happen faster in
[isolation]? Possibly.[89]

It is not often possible for young people themselves or
corrections professionals to identify adolescents with mental disabilities
before they are subjected to solitary confinement because some serious mental
disabilities do not manifest until late adolescence.[90]
Some of the young people interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union had been identified as having a mental disability at an
early age. Others reported experiencing various mental health problems
throughout their youth and while in solitary confinement, without having been
identified as having a mental disability. Some experienced mental health
problems and were identified as having a mental disability for the first time
during or after a period of solitary confinement.

Landon A., who struggled with auditory and visual
hallucinations before going to jail, described his experience in solitary
confinement: “I would hear stuff. When no one was around it was harder to
control. When I was by myself, I would hear stuff and see stuff more.”[91]
He said he was usually awake between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., trying to manage the
hallucinations. “I hear the most stuff at night,” he said,
“so it’s the hardest time to sleep.”

Young people with mental disabilities interviewed by Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union repeatedly described the
pain and suffering associated with attempting—and failing—to cope
with the mental health problems they experienced in solitary confinement. Asked
about struggling into the night with his hallucinations, Landon A. said
solitary confinement is “not a place that you want to go. It’s like
mind torture.”[92]

Some also reported that solitary confinement triggered
memories of past trauma, making it yet more difficult to cope with the
experience. Youth in the criminal justice system have histories of trauma and
abuse at much higher rates than the general population.[93]
And there is significant evidence to suggest that girls enter the criminal
justice system having suffered physical or sexual abuse at much higher rates
than boys, and therefore struggle disproportionately with past trauma.[94]
Melanie H., for example, was held in protective solitary confinement for three
months when she was 15 years old. She said, “When I was eleven, I was
raped. And it happened [again] in 2008 and 2009.”[95]
When she was isolated, the memories came back: “I was so upset …
and a lot was surfacing from my past.… I don’t like …feeling
alone. That’s a feeling I try to stay away from. I hate that
feeling.”[96]

As one defense attorney opined,

If you isolate a kid [for whom] isolation was a form of
child abuse, the jail doesn’t know how to deal [with that]. I have
represented clients who have locked [their] kids in a closet and go[ne] out all
night long—closets are cheap baby sitters. [I] don’t think anyone
explores those issues with those kids—there is no difference in
protocols, no accommodation [of past trauma].[97]

Thirty-five interviewees spent more than one period in
solitary confinement before they turned 18. This repeated isolation, according
to experts, “leaves [youth] with a potential for a post-traumatic
reaction.”[98] Phillip
J., for example, who was first held in solitary confinement for 36 days when he
was 16, described how isolation itself became a trigger for traumatic memories
of solitary confinement:

Once you are confined the way I was, then any other
confinement just triggers that experience—loss of sleep, all these
different flashbacks of different bad events. You try to harness it, but you
don’t know how or what’s going on or what’s happening.[99]

Barriers to Accessing Care

Young people in solitary confinement do not get the help
they need to cope or adequate access to treatment for mental health problems,
whether preexisting or newly developed. Because of this lack of adequate care
or access, their suffering can be worse than it may otherwise have been.

Human Rights Watch has elsewhere documented the widespread
failures of state prison systems to provide access to care for adults
experiencing mental health problems, including those with mental disabilities.[100]
On the contrary, prison systems sometimes react to prisoners experiencing a
crisis by punishing them. Isaiah O., who entered jail at 17, told us,

Sometimes, when I cut, having a razor or using it against
myself, they would give me a [disciplinary violation] for making the room
unsanitary or, two, for having a weapon.… It felt like I was going
against myself and they was [sic] going against me. That’s when I started
going crazy. I mean, I felt with the depression and them going against me,
that’s when I started catching assaults. I guess I was fighting two
wars—myself and then the officers.[101]

While some young people, like Isaiah O., described being
punished for conduct related to mental health problems, others reported being
diverted from one form of solitary confinement to another to protect them from
self-harm.[102]

In some facilities, young people felt that the only way to
get mental health care was through self-harm:

Sometimes you have to [cut yourself] to go to [medical
solitary confinement for suicide watch]… get psychological attention
… because if you have a psychological emergency or you need to talk to
somebody they won’t let you. [So I] cut myself on my arm … [when] I
be thinking in my head I need to talk to somebody before I do something I
don’t want to do.[103]

A few young people described corrections staff telling them
that they did not believe their cries for help or their requests for mental
health care. An extremely complicated and toxic atmosphere can develop when
corrections staff feel they need to be gatekeepers to mental healthcare. It is
too easy for overworked and under-resourced medical and corrections staff to
dismiss as malingering a cry for help. Indeed, some may exaggerate their
symptoms precisely because the solitary confinement is unbearable.

But, as one expert psychiatrist who evaluates mental
healthcare in detention, Dr. Cheryl Wills, said, mental health crises must be
taken seriously:

[Youth] need to be taken seriously whether or not they are
malingering. I have heard youth and adults say that [staff told them] that if
they were going to do it [kill themselves], don’t do it on that staff member’s shift. The security staff
is not expert in suicide risk assessment and some malingerers also are mentally
ill. The psychiatric interview includes an assessment of suicide risk that is
used to formulate a treatment plan. All threats of suicide should be
assessed, especially in incarcerated individuals who lack the flexibility to
leave the facility and to seek mental health services at a local emergency
room.[104]

Physical Harm

Young people held in adult jails and prisons are frequently
far from full-grown. Many of the young people we interviewed entered jail or
prison inches and pounds away from adulthood. One young man described being
unable to fit in his orange jumpsuit: “I believe I was 5’4”
or 5’5” … I weighed maybe 140 … in [solitary
confinement] they gave you the [orange uniform]. It was too big for me. It kept
falling off my waist and everything.”[105]

Jails and prisons are rarely equipped to appropriately
manage or provide for those who are physically immature. Our research showed
that solitary confinement in adult facilities resulted in a deprivation of
exercise and adequate nutrition.

Lack of Adequate Exercise

One of the defining experiences for youth held in solitary
confinement in many facilities is the hour out: one hour, each day, during
which adolescents are permitted, whether in a hallway, dayroom, or metal cage,
to walk around or exercise. Some facilities allow a few minutes more or less
than an hour, but an hour out is standard practice. However, Human Rights Watch
and the American Civil Liberties Union found that few facilities actually
provide for or encourage physical exercise for youth in solitary confinement.
Of the 77 young people we interviewed on their experience in solitary
confinement, 15 reported spending at least one period in solitary confinement
during which they were allowed no recreation at all. Young people in Florida
prisons, for example, reported being denied recreation for the first thirty
days spent in disciplinary solitary confinement, pursuant to Department of
Corrections (DOC) policy.[106]

Even when held in facilities that allowed outdoor
recreation, some adolescents in solitary confinement reported that they were
not always able to exercise. Jacob L. described having to wake, without a clock
or alarm, to ask to go to recreation:

You go to rec[reation] for an hour, but you have to be up
at six in the morning to catch the yard. Before they serve breakfast—you
got to catch them before breakfast and [then] they take you after breakfast. So
if you don’t know how to wake up, you can’t go outside.
That’s supposed to be mandatory [but] they don’t ask you—you
have to tell them.[107]

Due to reduced staffing on weekends, some facilities only
offer recreation during the week.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the US Department
of Health and Human Services both recommend that youth between the ages of six
and seventeen engage in one hour or more of physical activity each day.[108]
Both agencies recommend that youth regularly do a combination of activities,
including vigorous aerobic activity, like running, at least three days a week;
muscle-strengthening activity, such as gymnastics, at least three days a week;
and bone-strengthening activity, such as jumping rope, at least three days a
week.[109]

Most young people who did get to exercise outdoors, like
Jacob L., did so in a small, individual, fenced-in cage, often barely larger
than their cell. Almost all young people spent their out-of-cell time alone. It
is hard to imagine that these conditions would permit adequate aerobic or
muscle-strengthening exercise, let alone an adequate contrast from time in
one’s cell.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
did not interview any young people who described a jail or prison recreation
regime that ensured or encouraged strenuous aerobic physical activity. Many
young people described working out in their cells to cope with their time in
confinement. Jason L. described pacing his cell until he was exhausted:

I kind of talked myself through it. Pace[d] the room. I
learned that walking and talking takes you outside. So I would walk and talk
for about the first four days until I was dead tired, then sleep for about
three and do it over.[110]

Physical Changes and Stunted Growth

Youth who are physically growing and changing need
age-appropriate attention and care. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union found that young people in solitary confinement are sometimes
denied access to this care in facilities that provide it, and are denied it
altogether in those that do not. A number of young people reported going to
sleep hungry night after night. Some told Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union that they experienced (or witnessed in other adolescents)
other physical changes as a result of the stress of solitary confinement, such
as hair or weight loss.

Several facilities reported that there are no differences
between the physical health and dental services available for youth and adults.[111]
As one facility reported, “[A youth is] treated as an adult for medical,
dental, mental health issues.”[112]

Inadequate Nutrition

One of the most common complaints of young people held in
solitary confinement was that the food and meal schedule were nutritionally
inadequate, and that they were denied the opportunity to supplement their
nutrition by purchasing food items from the facility’s commissary or
canteen. Some young people described losing weight as a result.

Caroline I., who spent approximately 41 days in punitive
solitary confinement while she was under 18, said, “They only give you a
little food, so that’s hard. You lose weight…. I went in 150 and
came out 132. That’s more than 15 pounds!”[113]
A grandmother who visited her grandson in solitary confinement observed that he
“definitely lost weight—he’s so little [now].” She estimated
that he lost 15-20 pounds after he entered solitary confinement.[114]

Some young people said that, during their time in punitive
solitary confinement, their diet was changed to a baked nutritional loaf as a
form of additional punishment. Others described being fed a diet that consisted
mostly of beans and processed foods.

The US Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes
of Health both recommend a balanced diet of nutrient-dense foods, including
vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.[115] While
the overall nutritional needs of youth and adults are similar in regards to
caloric intake, youth physical development, including bone development,
requires additional amounts of some nutrients to ensure healthy growth.[116]

Other Physical Effects

Young people interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union described experiencing other physical changes in
solitary confinement. One young person reported, “I saw a guy who lost
his hair in [solitary confinement]. He wasn’t like that before he got
locked up.”[117]

One female interviewee described that, during the months she
was in solitary confinement, she stopped menstruating. She recalled that she
didn’t start again until after she was transferred out of solitary
confinement and to a juvenile facility:

You know it is funny to say. I know I was having periods at
that time of my life. But I don’t have any memories of having one at the
jail. I remember I went through a long period of time at the juvenile facility
where I didn’t have them. That was right when I came back [from jail]. I
knew it was a number of months because for a long time I was wondering why I
wasn’t having them. I remember because most women complain about them but
when I got mine again I was glad. It made me feel human—or at least
functioning the way things were supposed to be.[118]

Studies have linked changes in menstruation to stress and
trauma.[119]

Social and Developmental Harm

Young people in solitary confinement are frequently deprived
of contact with their families and their own children, access to education, and
to programming or services necessary for their growth, development, and
rehabilitation.

Denial of Family Contact

Limitations on family visits are a common feature of all
forms of solitary confinement. Many facilities deny adolescents contact with
their families while they are in solitary confinement. For some, this means no
visits, no phone calls, and no letters. Facilities often view these things as
privileges that young people in solitary confinement can be denied as a result
of their classification, or to punish them.

Twenty-one teenagers told us they were denied the ability to
visit with loved ones during a period of solitary confinement. Nineteen spent
at least one period in solitary confinement during which they were only allowed
to visit with loved ones while in a cage, behind glass, or by video-conference.
Eleven spent at least one period in solitary confinement during which they were
not allowed to write letters to loved ones, having been denied access to pen or
pencil and paper.

For some young people, family is the only thing that gives
them hope:

I catch myself in the moment, attempting [suicide]. But
then I think about my family and everyone on the outs[ide] and I think, if I
chose to do that, I can never come home. I think if it weren’t for my
family, I would have chosen to commit suicide.[120]

Jeffrey J., whom Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union interviewed in administrative solitary confinement while he was
awaiting a disciplinary hearing, feared losing contact if placed in punitive
solitary confinement:

I hope they don’t take my visits or call away. Today
is going to make the third day I haven’t got a call.... My mom really,
really cares about me so she wants to know what is going on.... As long as I
can talk to my family, I’ll be okay. I could be in a room all day if I
could talk to my family.[121]

In some facilities, young people were allowed visits when in
solitary confinement, but denied physical contact with their family members,
forced to talk through glass or a metal screen. For some, this was as painful
as solitary itself: “The hardest part is being behind glass when your
family visits and you can’t hold your family.”[122]
Young people cited the denial of hugs and kisses as a source of pain and
suffering. Another teenager said, “It was very depressing not to be able
to give them a hug. I would cry about that.”[123]
Again and again, young people stressed the importance of physical touch. One
young woman said, “[Visits] behind glass … [were] torture—I
couldn’t touch my family.”[124] A few
young parents reported that they were also prevented from receiving visits from
their own children while in solitary confinement.

Denial of Adequate Education

Young people in solitary confinement, including adolescents
with intellectual disabilities, commonly reported being denied access to
adequate education. Youth in some facilities were regularly provided with a
packet of educational materials for in-cell self-study, but often their completed
work went ungraded and their questions unanswered.

For some jails and prisons, access to education ends the
moment the solitary confinement cell door slams shut, regardless of the age of
the inmate inside.[125] As
Darrell E., who spent approximately 20 days in protective solitary confinement
in jail when he was 15, stated bluntly, “No, there was no school for
inmates in isolation and there were no exceptions for me.”[126]

Only 31 young people reported receiving educational
programming of any type during a period of solitary confinement. Fourteen young
people reported spending a period of time in solitary confinement during which
they were provided only with a packet of materials to complete in their cell.
Twenty-five young people reported spending a period of time in solitary
confinement during which they were not provided any educational programming at
all; sixteen described spending periods of time in solitary confinement without
even a book or magazine to read.

In a few states, education in jails is provided in
consultation (or even directly by) state or local departments of education (or
school boards). In some of these jurisdictions, the law only provides for
limited education, such as four hours per week in Colorado, and allows security
exceptions that are applied to youth in solitary confinement.[127]
In other jurisdictions, youth in solitary confinement are taught through
“cell study,” packets of materials dropped off at their cells.[128]
Some young people reported eagerly—and quickly—completing any work
packets provided by jails or prisons. Others said they refused to study in
their cells. Jeremiah I. said,

If you are enrolled in school, they slide a packet under
your door. I don’t do it. I don’t feel like doing work in my cell.
If they would take me to school I would do it, but … they just keep
giving you work.[129]

Some facilities take no further steps after an adolescent,
like Jeremiah, refuses education. Sometimes, those who received cell-study
materials were able to consult with a teacher. However, usually this was either
through the cell door or by phone. One young woman described how “the
officer who does cell-study asks if you have anything and want to talk to your
teacher and then you talk on the phone.”[130]
Some young people reported interrupted or infrequent contacts with educators.

As discussed above, a number of young people reported
experiencing serious mental health problems in solitary confinement. Some of
those young people described diminished reasoning and learning abilities as a
result of solitary confinement. Jordan E. described feeling mentally slower
after solitary confinement:

[Solitary confinement] absolutely slowed down my thinking
skills. I would come out of [solitary] and be demonstrably slower. Following
conversations, doing math work, my brain slowed down quite a bit. I was far
more depressed. There were no real mental health services [in the jail].[131]

Struggling with Intellectual Disabilities

While adult facilities, especially jails, struggle to
provide any educational programming for youth, specialized programming
for youth with intellectual disabilities is even rarer.[132]

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed 11 young people who reported that before entering jail or prison
they had either been taught in special classes, having been identified as
having a learning disability, or had an individual education plan.[133]
Some facilities are unable to identify adolescents with intellectual
disabilities, relying on records provided by parents or schools in the community.
One prison official reported,

We are not allowed to identify [learning disabilities]. As
a department, we don’t identify those types of issues. If we get an
individual and we think they might be [in need of] special education—if a
parent has paperwork—we can do that process. But as far as someone coming
in off the street? If we don’t have paperwork, we can’t do that.[134]

The provision of educational programming to young people
with intellectual disabilities can also be complicated by the checkered educational
history of many adolescents, even though they may never have been identified as
having an intellectual disability.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is
a federal law that governs the provision of appropriate special education and
related services for youth with disabilities. IDEA was signed into law in
1990 and was significantly amended in 2004. All states receive IDEA funds and
are therefore subject to its provisions.[135] IDEA requires
the provision of a free and appropriate public education to youth with
disabilities, in the least restrictive environment, according to their
individual needs through age 21.[136]
In defining the “least restrictive environment,” IDEA states,

To the maximum extent possible, children with
disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other
care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special
classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with
disabilities from the regular educational environment [emphasis added]
occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such
that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and
services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.[137]

With
regard to detention facilities, IDEA states that governors or other
appropriate state officials may assign to any public agency in their state
the responsibility of ensuring that particular requirements are met with
respect to youth with disabilities who are convicted as adults and are incarcerated
in adult prisons.[138]

But state
law exemptions for adult facilities leave many adolescents with disabilities
without the basic educational guarantees set forth in IDEA. Florida, for
example, allows for young people with disabilities who are convicted as
adults and incarcerated in adult prisons to be exempted from certain IDEA
provisions regarding assessment and transition planning.[139] In addition, for young people with
disabilities in Florida’s adult prisons, the team devoted to a
student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) may modify that
youth’s program or placement based on certain security or penal
interests beyond the restrictions set forth in IDEA.[140] Youth with disabilities in
solitary confinement are often prevented from receiving proper educational
services, such as basic out-of-cell instruction.

Failure to Provide for Rehabilitation or Social
Development

Some of the deprivations that young people confront in
solitary confinement differ little from the normal conditions of incarceration.
Jails and prisons spend few resources on programming or services, with jails
spending even fewer resources than prisons. Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union found that it was exceedingly rare that facilities
provided programming or services aimed at rehabilitation or social development
to young people under age 18 in solitary confinement. While this is a problem
for adolescents in adult facilities generally, the problem is acute for those
in solitary confinement. Youth enter jails and prisons—and solitary
confinement—in the midst of a transition to adulthood.

As one expert with experience in juvenile and adult
facilities told Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,

We are raising these kids. We need to teach them.…
What we are doing is putting young men [and women] who are forming their
identity in a situation where they are learning to do things—not in a
good way.… So if we are going to send young men [and women] to prison, we
need truly specialized units where they can learn and grow. Because I think we
all want them to be better off when they come out. The other thing they need is
skills that will help them on the outside.[141]

Young people who have not had the same life experience as
adults need programming to facilitate their development. Those who have been
convicted of a crime also require rehabilitative programming. All youth
deprived of their liberty need programming aimed at reentry into society. The
longer young people are held in solitary confinement, the more egregious the
deprivation becomes.

Almost all adolescents charged or convicted in the adult
criminal justice system are eventually released into the community. Young
people, as well as corrections and psychological experts, expressed concerns
about the long-term implications for youth, and public safety, of failing to
adequately provide for youth development and rehabilitation. Todd D., who
entered jail when he was 17, said this about his own experience,

I can’t speak for everybody but I know if I was given
that opportunity I would be different right now. The good changes in my life, I
had to learn by myself. But that road, it scars you in ways—it’s
bad.[142]

Jails and prisons generally use solitary confinement for one
of three reasons: to punish inmates; to manage them (either to protect others
from them, or them from others); or to treat them. Yet the conditions that
young people in solitary confinement experience are essentially the same,
regardless of the purpose for which it is being used. Young people held in
adult facilities across the United States are subjected to all forms of
solitary confinement, without accommodation for their age or developmental
needs, and often for weeks and months.

Solitary Confinement to Punish Inmates

Jails and prisons often maintain internal order through a
system of discipline, with solitary confinement among the most serious in a
range of sanctions for violating facility rules. Facilities across the United
States—whether they hold youth with adults, with other adolescents, or in
isolation—frequently subject young people under age 18 to the same
disciplinary rules as adult inmates.[143] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have found that jails and
prisons impose terms of solitary confinement of 15, 30, 60, 90 days, or longer
for each infraction committed within a facility, and frequently punish a
range of inmate behaviors within isolation with additional terms of solitary
confinement.[144]

Corrections officials in many county jails reported that
youth who violate facility rules can be placed in separation, or segregation,
or special management cells.[145] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed young people
who had been subjected to several— often prolonged—periods of
punitive solitary confinement. Of the individuals interviewed by Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, 41 had spent time in at least 1
period of punitive solitary confinement while under age 18; 22 of those young
people had spent a total of 2 months or longer in punitive solitary confinement
before they turned 18.

One young man who was held in punitive solitary confinement
in New York said,

The cell was hell. Hell.… Can’t talk to
nobody.… I counted the bricks. There was a bed, a desk, a toilet, a sink,
and a window. It was small because all the stuff was in there … [you can]
see outside—busses, birds, fields, people in the yard. You could see
freedom, but you can’t get out. It makes your time hell.… [The]
first thing I thought was, damn, I’m going to be here for 60 days.…
I felt like shit. Damn! No contact with anyone for 60 days?[146]

Following an alleged infraction, placement in punitive solitary
confinement frequently begins with a notice describing the charges and a
hearing.[147] At
this hearing, individuals are generally entitled to call witnesses. However, it
was almost unthinkable, among the young people interviewed by Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, to actually call a witness, even
when young people asserted their innocence in the matter.[148]
One of the rare young men who said he would have liked to call witnesses, told
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, “I could have
had witnesses, but you have to know their first and last names and [inmate]
numbers.”[149] More
commonly, young people reported that it was unsafe to speak out against others
to facility staff, so they had no choice but to appear alone. Some young men
and women told Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union that
they had admitted the charges against them during their hearing.[150]

Hearings almost always result in a finding of guilt based on
the testimony of officials alone, and some interviewees described being
punished on the basis of minimal evidence.[151] For
example, a young man in one facility in Florida described officials punishing a
group of inmates for banging on their cell doors because officials could not
determine which inmates were responsible:

People were kicking the[ir] door[s] and yelling. Then [the
officials] said, “We are going to put you on lockdown! We are going to
put you on lockdown!”… I [later] asked the [corrections officer]
why we [were] on lockdown if we didn’t kick the door. He said,
“Man, you know how it is. There is [sic] a thousand of you in
here—I can’t tell who is kicking the door.”[152]

Once a prisoner is found guilty of a disciplinary offense,
jail or prison officials usually punish him or her with a term of days based on
a structured disciplinary code. Because most facilities subject youth and
adults to the same rules and regulations as adults, both young people and
adults are usually punished with the same amount of punitive solitary confinement
when found to have violated facility rules. As one official told Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, “There is no
differentiation. There are the rules. If you violate the rules you’ll go
through the process and your hearing and any potential discipline is the same
regardless of age.”[153]
Because jurisdictions often subject individuals to multiple,
serial—rather than concurrent—periods of solitary confinement for
more than one rule violation stemming from a single incident, periods of
solitary confinement can be long.[154]

Youth rarely reported that their age was discussed during
their disciplinary hearings. A few young people reported that officials noted
their age only in passing—“[the officer] just said I was young and
very angry”—rather than to suggest mitigating the punishment.[155]
One adolescent told Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
that a mental health worker at the facility raised his youth at his
disciplinary hearing, but that the hearing officer said, “That doesn’t
matter. He’s in prison now and needs to learn how to act. It’s his
fault.”[156]

While a formal appeal process often exists, very few young
people reported appealing the decisions sentencing them to solitary
confinement.[157] As
experts have suggested, it is even more difficult for children to successfully
navigate a prison grievance system than for adult prisoners. One expert said,
“On average, juveniles are more impulsive, less capable of planning a
course of action and taking steps, particularly when there are timelines for
taking those steps.... So they’re just less capable, on average, than an
adult of doing that.”[158]

More than adults, incarcerated teens often act out to
protect themselves or to fit into a culture of violence, including by fighting
or committing other disciplinary infractions. The New York City Department of
Corrections reported that the most common disciplinary infraction for
adolescents is fighting.[159] An
analysis of data made available to independent researchers by the Florida
Department of Corrections suggests that rates of misconduct of adolescents
under age 18 were significantly greater than adults between the ages of 18 and
20, and many times greater than older adults.[160]

Several young people told Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union that other adolescents or adults tested them
when they arrived at a jail or prison, and that they felt they had to defend
themselves to avoid future abuse. Many young people reported that their first
period of solitary confinement was soon after they arrived at the facility.
Ernesto D. told Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,

[I]f someone puts their hands on you, you must defend yourself. They want to
know that you will defend yourself. I seen [sic] people get hit and now
everyone hits them. You have to deal with it. Once you set the record straight
you can stay out of trouble.[161]

The rules and regulations governing punitive solitary
confinement are often structured such that officials have significant
discretion about the length of time youth spend in solitary confinement. When
charging, officials can generally choose whether particular conduct corresponds
to a more or less serious infraction and choose from a range of penalties.
Jordan E., who entered jail when he was 15 years old, told us that officials
responded to seemingly any infraction with punitive solitary confinement:

15 days for not making the bed; 15 days for not keeping the
cell door open; 20 or 25 days for being in someone else’s cell. In the
write-up book, they could have suspended privileges or anything. All they did
is disciplinary seg[regation]. I would put my ear wax in the toilet in my cell
and flush it to watch it spin. I did [solitary confinement] time for that. It
was crazy.[162]

Some rules and regulations also give officials discretion to
reduce the length of time youth spend in solitary confinement, either at the
sentencing phase or before release. But that’s not true for all prison
rules, despite the fact that some officials say that, if they had discretion,
they would generally be inclined to reduce isolation terms. The rules governing
solitary confinement in Pennsylvania, for example, allow officials to reduce
periods of solitary confinement imposed, but only for some infractions, not
all. Officials in Pennsylvania reported that they feel their hands are tied.
“Unfortunately, those are the policies that guide us,” one said.
“We try to get them out when we can, but we can’t always get them
out.”[163]

Young people in punitive solitary confinement are often
entitled to an hour outside of their cell each day, during which they can walk
around, alone, in an indoor area, make phone calls, or take a shower. In some
facilities they are taken to an outdoor exercise yard, often a small cage.[164]
Facilities often severely restrict what can be inside a punitive solitary
confinement cell, including for young people. For example, 12 young people
across various states and counties told Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union that they were unable to have a book in their cells (some
facilities made an exception for the Christian bible). As one young man said,
“There were no phones, no visits, no books, no newspapers—just the
bible.”[165] It was
rare for a facility to permit access to any out-of-cell programming to those in
punitive solitary confinement.

Solitary Confinement to Manage Inmates

Jail and prison officials most commonly use two forms of
administrative solitary confinement to manage inmates, including adolescents,
who are at risk of victimization or who are too difficult to manage in the
general population.

Protective Solitary
Confinement

International law and the laws of a number of US states
require that young people be separated from adults when detained.[166]
And many facilities also require such separation as a matter of policy.[167]
Yet, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union found that to
achieve this purpose, some facilities resort to holding youth in permanent
solitary confinement. In other facilities, where youth and adults are
intermingled or where many young people are held together, corrections
officials sometimes use solitary confinement to protect particular adolescents.
Some facilities use this practice for weeks or months.

A number of corrections officials confirmed that they used
solitary confinement to separate adolescents from adults.[168]
In states with a lower age of criminal majority, such as Michigan or Wisconsin,
where all young people age 17 are charged as adults, some facilities hold all
those age 17 and older together with adults, but separate those who are
younger.[169] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed 27 young people
across the United States who had been placed in solitary confinement to protect
them or to segregate them from adults or other inmates. A recent University of
Texas survey of Texas jails found that 25 out of 41 jails that responded to a
survey held youth in protective solitary confinement by default.[170]

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) regulations require
jails and prisons to keep youth under age 18 separate from adults age 18 and
older in all common spaces.[171]
Although they acknowledge the difficulties that corrections officials face in
trying to keep youth segregated from adults, PREA regulations do not prohibit
isolation or solitary confinement. Rather, they state that facilities
“shall make best efforts to avoid placing youthful inmates in
isolation.”[172]
A separate regulation requires that inmates at high risk of sexual
victimization “shall not ordinarily” be placed in involuntary
protective custody for more than 30 days.[173] But it is
unclear how the two sets of regulations interact.

In acknowledging that there should be a limit on
involuntary protective custody, and that facilities should not use isolation
to protect youth, the Department of Justice has recognized that long-term
solitary confinement is not an acceptable solution to the challenges of
housing and managing vulnerable inmates. Yet, Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union found 21 cases in which young people held in
protective isolation reported spending months in solitary confinement.

In some circumstances, facilities place young people in
protective solitary confinement after they request protection. Several young
people described preferring protective solitary confinement to the violence
they feared or faced in the general population.

Sean F., for example, told Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union that after he had difficulty in protective
solitary confinement, the facility moved him:

They moved me to a pod with adults. These guys were much
older. They were nowhere near 17. [I was there] about three weeks. Then I
couldn’t take it. Just the thought, every day, asking,
“What’s going to happen?”… Maybe they are coming for me
next. I got paranoid … [they transferred me back to isolation]. It was
better. You weren’t as scared because [I] knew no one was going to wake
up in the middle of the night and harm me.[174]

Corrections officials acknowledge that adolescents seeking
protection sometimes commit disciplinary infractions so they will be taken out
of the general population. Until recently, Colorado did not have any formal
mechanism to accommodate inmates in protective custody. Officials reported that
administrative solitary confinement was used as a substitute by some:
“Sometimes people hang out in Ad[ministrative] Seg[regation] because they
are afraid. We have certainly seen that used to manage younger offenders who
cannot live in general population without living in fear.”[175]

Marcus S., who entered jail when he was 14 and was housed in
a cell in a juvenile pod with two older adolescent cell-mates, said he was
placed in protective solitary confinement after experiencing sexual abuse:

[My 17 year old cell mate] kept on telling me
stuff—like types of stuff you would say to females. And it escalated and
when he approached me—I couldn’t defend myself against two of them
in the room—and he sexually abused me. I went and told the officer and he
said I had to do something to be taken out of the dorm.… [At my
disciplinary hearing, when I explained what had happened] the corporal said she
didn’t want to give me [a disciplinary violation]. She put me in
protective custody.… She told me she was going to give me some help and
let me stay in the isolation cell for a while.[176]

Marcus S. said he spent six months in protective solitary
confinement following the incident. In some facilities, as with Marcus S.,
young people sometimes feel or are told that they have few options in order to
keep themselves safe. Young people are forced into a position where they are
choosing between solitary confinement and physical assault.

Some facilities place lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
or intersex (LGBTI) inmates, and inmates who are perceived as LGBTI, in
protective segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement, to
protect them from the increased risk of sexual abuse that these inmates face.[177]

Like young people in punitive solitary confinement, those in
protective solitary confinement were often permitted out of their cell for one
or two hours each day, frequently alone in an indoor dayroom. Some, but not
all, facilities allowed outdoor recreation. Generally, young people were
allowed to make phone calls and take a short shower during their time out of
their cells. Two interviewees reported being the only adolescent in a particular
unit, and that, for at least part of their detention, they were therefore
permitted to spend much of their day in an empty common area, although they
were still alone.[178]
Facilities regulate what can be inside a protective solitary confinement cell,
including for youth. Some facilities permit more privileges for those in
protective solitary confinement than for those in punitive solitary
confinement.

Administrative Solitary
Confinement

Jail and prison officials frequently use solitary
confinement to segregate individual inmates who they cannot otherwise manage
from the general population. In most facilities, some form of administrative
segregation can follow one or more terms of punitive solitary confinement and
extend for months, or even indefinitely. It is generally the result of an
inmate’s “classification” and an evaluation of an
inmate’s perceived dangerousness or likely future conduct.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed 28 young people who had spent a period of time in administrative
solitary confinement while under age 18 in adult jails and prisons. Of those
young people, six had spent six months or more in administrative solitary
confinement. In addition, a number of the young people interviewed by Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union entered administrative solitary
confinement while under 18, but remained there for many years; at least 2 had
spent a total of more than 10 years in administrative solitary confinement
after they turned 18.

As one young man described in a letter,

Imagine that you’re locked in a small room like a
bathroom 23 hours a day. You’re handcuffed when you’re moved
outside of it. Your food is thrown under the door and you have five books per
week. It’s noisy outside with some [inmate] or another yelling,
screaming, banging on his door at ALL HOURS; it smells worse than the monkey
house at the older zoos no matter how hard you clean your own cell.… In
seg[regation] you either implode or explode; you lose touch with reality, hear
voices, hallucinate, and think for hours about killing yourself, others, or
both. The anger and hurt gets so intense that you suspect everyone and trust no
one and when someone does something nice for you, you don’t understand
it.[179]

Long-term administrative solitary confinement is generally
imposed on a prisoner as a classification or housing decision. Such decisions
to “administratively” isolate prisoners generally consider factors
such as the individual’s criminal conviction and history, severity of any
disciplinary infractions, and other individual characteristics.[180]
However, the criteria used in this “classification” of prisoners
rarely include the age of an inmate.[181]
Because some young people who spend time in state prison systems are convicted
of serious offenses, they can be classified in a manner that leads to their
direct placement in administrative solitary confinement.[182]
Prolonged administrative solitary confinement is less common in pre-trial
facilities, but does occur, particularly in larger jails.[183]

Another major factor in administrative solitary confinement
determinations is conduct within a facility. As noted above, adolescents often
misbehave or commit disciplinary infractions to protect themselves or fit into
a culture of violence in jail and prison. Repeated disciplinary infractions can
lead to administrative segregation, as it did with a number of young people
interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Prison and jail officials sometimes say it is necessary to
separate an inmate, or groups of inmates, from others to ensure the security of
staff and inmates in the general population. When this happens, some state
prison officials said that they have to use solitary confinement, as they are
not equipped to manage individual or small groups of prisoners in any other
way. But several prison officials often told Human Rights Watch that they would
like to have the ability to manage youth differently. As Tom Clements, the
executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections stated, “If
I had a wish list, it would be to have the flexibility to have more intensive
case management, mental health, and other programming to keep [youth] engaged
in something that can build positive self-esteem.”[184]
Officials in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said that, although
they try to divert youth from solitary confinement when possible, generally
“4-5 percent of youth [in segregation] are those [who officials]
can’t incorporate back into the population.”[185]

In recent years, legislators and corrections officials in a
number of states have begun to reexamine the use of prolonged solitary
confinement to manage inmates. The state of Mississippi recently reduced the
population of inmates in long-term administrative solitary confinement by 75.6
percent, and closed the state’s super-maximum security prison.[186]
The Mississippi Department of Corrections found that prison violence decreased
significantly as a result, and millions of dollars were saved in the process.[187]
The Commissioner of Corrections, Chris Epps, recently testified before the US
Senate that solitary confinement “created a situation where the norm was
to be disruptive as there were no incentives to change behavior.”[188]
Colorado, Illinois, and Maine have also begun taking steps to reduce the number
of inmates confined in long-term isolation.[189] The US
Senate Judiciary Committee recently held hearings on the issue for the first
time in its history.[190] These
reforms may reflect a growing consensus that reliance on solitary confinement
to manage inmates is costly, cruel, and unnecessary.

As with the experience of the young people in punitive and
protective solitary confinement, those in administrative solitary confinement
are often permitted out of their cell for one hour each day. Some, but not all,
facilities allow outdoor recreation.[191]
Facilities often strictly limit what can be inside an administrative solitary
confinement cell, including for young people. Some facilities permit more
privileges to those in long-term administrative solitary confinement—such
as a radio or television, if the prisoner is able to afford to purchase such
items from the facility—than they permit to those in punitive solitary
confinement. But telephone and visitation privileges are sometimes more
restrictive, particularly in prisons.

Solitary Confinement to Treat Inmates

Some adult jails and prisons use a stark form of solitary
confinement to manage perceived and actual psychological emergencies.[192]
Some years ago, it was considered medically appropriate, in a range of
circumstances, to use lengthy isolation, usually called seclusion, as a
therapeutic intervention for adults and, sometimes, adolescents. The current
medical consensus disfavors the use of stark and prolonged isolation,
preferring an approach much more tailored to the mental health needs of
individual patients. For example, one forensic child psychiatrist told Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, regarding seclusion for
suicidal adolescents, “When you are
feeling suicidal, [isolation] may well make you feel worse.”[193]

However, several young people, including young people with
mental disabilities, told Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union that they were subjected to medical solitary confinement for days at a
time; in a few cases, young people reported being held in medical solitary
confinement for weeks. Some young people also reported being placed in medical
solitary confinement after experiencing acute difficulty and having threatened
or attempted to commit suicide in other forms of solitary confinement.

Four young people described, in detail, time spent in
inpatient mental health facilities within state prison systems. These young
people all reported spending long periods in isolation in these facilities,
including periods of medical solitary confinement.

Unlike the experience of the young people in other forms of
solitary confinement, those in medical solitary confinement were often not
permitted out of their cell at all. Facilities often permit almost nothing to
be inside a medical solitary confinement cell. Frequently, young people were
naked except for a thin paper gown—called a “turtle suit” by
some because of its appearance—and were allowed only a single, thick,
tear-resistant blanket.

Christopher M. described his experience in medical solitary
confinement in a letter:

[I] was put in a pa[dd]ed room for 24 hours with a smock
and hard blanket. [I] was served food in a paper tray[. I] was to eat with
hands[. A]fter the meal [I] was not aloud [sic] to wash my hands[. I] was to
shit and piss in the floor and not able to wipe my but[t] and not able to flush
the hole in the ground[I] was to talk to a person about my sueisideaul [sic]
thoughts … [I] learned nothing from this person … was out in 24
hours and put in isolation for 15 days which usually got extended [due] to
behavior issues … that was only one of some 50 times [I] was put in
observation for attempted sueiside [sic] or saying [I] was going to kill
myself.[194]

Quarantine

Some facilities use solitary confinement to quarantine
adolescents, often when they first enter a facility. Quarantine practices vary
significantly across facilities. Young people in some jails described being
held separately at the beginning of their detention, pending the results of a
tuberculosis test. In other facilities, young people were not segregated, but
held with other incoming inmates. In some facilities, young people reported not
spending any time in quarantine upon entry. Inmates who reported being
subjected to medical solitary confinement for this purpose generally described
being held for one, two, or three days.[195] As
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have argued
elsewhere, whether an inmate is placed in a temporary medical quarantine should
be based on whether it is medically necessary.[196]
There are serious questions about whether medical solitary confinement is
overused for quarantine and not actually justified as necessary for public health
reasons.

Seclusion and SAMHSA

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA)—an agency of the US Department of Health and
Human Services—is devoted to addressing the social and fiscal impacts of
mental disabilities and substance abuse. SAMHSA has dedicated significant
resources to reducing the use of seclusion and restraint in various forms of
mental health treatment. SAMHSA shapes policy through contracts and grants,
using various national information and data. SAMHSA has found that the use of
seclusion for individuals with mental health issues has resulted in death,
psychological trauma, and serious physical injury, including of young people.[197]
SAMHSA has further noted that children are at a particularly high risk of death
and serious injury, as a result of the use of seclusion and restraint.[198]
Through grant programs in a number of states, SAMHSA has worked to eliminate
the use of seclusion and restraint in treatment and rehabilitation, except as a
safety intervention of last resort, and has formally recognized the detrimental
effects of holding individuals in isolation, particularly children and
individuals with mental disabilities.[199]

Rates of Solitary Confinement

Neither states nor the federal government publish systematic
data that show the number of youth held in adult jails and prisons who are
subjected to solitary confinement.[200] And it
is impossible to determine the precise number of people under age 18 subjected
to solitary confinement. But the available data suggest that the practice is
prevalent in particular jurisdictions and occurs nationwide.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
identified facilities that hold 100 percent of youth in solitary confinement;
large jail and prison systems that hold more than 10 percent of youth in
solitary confinement at any given time; and facilities that avoid or rarely use
the practice.

Jail officials in three states reported that all young
people under age 18 in their facilities were held in protective solitary
confinement.[201] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed six young
people in other facilities who reported spending the entire period of their
pre-trial detention in solitary confinement. Media and other reporting suggest
that this practice is widespread in some states.[202]

Information gathered from one large prison system and one
large county jail system suggests that, in those facilities, more than 10
percent of youth held there are subjected to disciplinary solitary confinement.[203]
Disciplinary data reported by the New York City Department of Corrections
suggests that 14.4 percent of adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 spend
part of their pre-trial detention in solitary confinement.[204]
This is significant because the department is one of the largest jail systems
in the country. The most common disciplinary infraction for adolescents between
the ages of 16 and 18 in the New York City Department of Corrections is for
fighting.[205]

Population data reported by the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections, which holds adolescents and young adults in a single facility
through age 21, suggest that approximately 10.9 percent of inmates there are
held in solitary confinement.[206] Like
New York City’s facility, the department mixes young people under age 18
with young adults, but officials confirmed that approximately 10 percent of
adolescents are consistently held in a form of solitary confinement.[207]
Pennsylvania is among the 15 states that hold the largest number of young
people under age 18 in adult prisons.[208]

Many officials reported that they subject youth and adults
to the same disciplinary rules and that they subject youth to solitary
confinement as a punitive sanction.[209] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed 36 young people
who spent several periods in solitary confinement in jail or prison before they
turned 18.

As previously noted, some research suggests that youth in
adult prisons may commit disciplinary infractions at a rate that is higher than
younger adult prisoners and much higher than older adults.[210]
Disciplinary data made available to independent researchers by the Florida
Department of Corrections suggest that approximately one in every ten
adolescents in Florida prisons is found guilty of an assaultive rule violation.[211]
Florida houses more young people under age 18 in its prisons than any other
state. In Florida prisons, as in most other adult facilities, assaultive rule
violations can result in a sanction that includes solitary confinement.[212]

While some large facilities reported high levels of solitary
confinement, one facility in Erie County, New York, reported using disciplinary
segregation only rarely and as a last resort.[213]

On the basis of our research and these partial, but
suggestive, statistics, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union believe that solitary confinement of young people under age 18 is a
serious and widespread problem.

Length of Time Spent in Solitary Confinement

There are also no comprehensive national data on the
duration of the solitary confinement of young people under age 18. The limited
evidence available suggests that adolescents in a significant number of jails
and prisons spend prolonged periods—weeks and months, rather than just
hours and days—in solitary confinement.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with young people who reported spending lengthy
periods in solitary confinement. While not a representative sample, 49 of the
127 young people asked said that they spent between 1 and 6 months in solitary
confinement before they turned 18. Twenty-nine reported spending longer than
six months in solitary confinement.

Officials in some jurisdictions have reported that youth in
the adult criminal justice system are less likely to be released on bail than
adults and therefore spend longer periods in pre-trial detention.[214]
Human Rights Watch interviewed or corresponded with some young people who had
spent more than one year in detention awaiting trial before turning eighteen.
In some cases, this may mean that young people are more likely to be subjected
to solitary confinement in jurisdictions where the practice is common.

Table 1: Total time spent in solitary confinement reported by young people

Total Length of Time in Solitary Confinement

1-7 days

8-30 days

31-180 days

181-365 days

365+days

Exact
Duration Unknown

Number of Youth

11

11

49

21

8

27

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed young men and women who had been sentenced to a range of time in
punitive solitary confinement. Young people in a few facilities reported being
sentenced to less than a week in solitary confinement for fighting; others, to
weeks or months.[215] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union did not independently
verify accounts of the precise nature of the disposition, but young people
described different penalties for similar infractions in different facilities,
such as fights that did not result in bleeding or injury. Many young people
spoke about being punished for defending themselves from an assault from another
inmate.

Not all interviewees recalled the precise number of days
they had spent in punitive solitary confinement in jail or prison as
adolescents. Some also said that they spent time in administrative solitary
confinement pending their disciplinary hearing. While not a representative
sample, for those young people who did report the specific time periods, the
most common disciplinary sanctions to which they had been subjected were
between 15 and 29 days.

While most facilities reported subjecting young people to
the same lengths of punitive solitary confinement as adults, a representative
of one facility in Erie County, New York, said that young people there were
sentenced to shorter periods of disciplinary segregation than adults.[216]

Disciplinary rules, and the corresponding durations of
solitary confinement, vary from state to state and jail to jail. Sanctions are
commonly graduated, with the maximum period of solitary confinement for
individual sanctions often increasing with severity, for example, from 7 to 15
to 30 to 60 days, depending on the infraction. Jail and prison officials in
many jurisdictions reported that youth are generally subjected to the same
length of time in punitive solitary confinement as adults.[217]
Some jurisdictions subject individuals to multiple, consecutive—rather
than concurrent—periods of solitary confinement for multiple, one rule
violations, stemming from a single incident.[218] This
can significantly increase the duration of solitary confinement when it is
imposed as a disciplinary penalty.

The New York City Department of Corrections reported that a
typical period of punitive solitary confinement for fighting for adolescents
between the ages of 16 and 18 is 20 days.[219] The
median period of punitive solitary confinement for adolescents, overall, is 29
days; the average period of punitive solitary confinement is 43.1 days.[220]
This suggests that some young people spend very long periods in solitary
confinement.[221]
Furthermore, young people generally spend more time in solitary confinement
than adults.[222]

As with punitive solitary confinement, not all young people
recalled the precise number of days, weeks, or months they had spent in
protective solitary confinement in jail or prison while they were under age 18.
While not a representative sample, for those young people who did report the
specific time periods, the most common duration was longer than six months.
Four of them reported spending longer than one year in protective solitary
confinement.

Table 3: Length of protective solitary confinement reported by young people

Length of Each Protective Solitary Confinement Period

1-6 days

7-14 days

15-29 days

30-59 days

60-89 days

90 to 179
days

180 days
or longer

Each Period of Protective Solitary Confinement

4

3

3

4

5

11

18

There is rarely any absolute temporal limit on
administrative solitary confinement (solitary confinement as an administrative,
management, or housing measure). Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union interviewed a number of young people who began multi-year
periods of administrative solitary confinement in state prison systems while
they were under 18.[223]

The use of medical solitary confinement as a therapeutic
intervention also varies across facilities. Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union interviewed young people who described spending a few
days in isolation when in the midst of, or immediately following, a mental
health crisis. Four young people described spending more than a week in medical
solitary confinement. A number of young people who described having great
difficulty coping while in different forms of solitary confinement reported
spending several periods in medical solitary confinement. Others reported being
transferred from medical solitary confinement to another form of solitary
confinement.

IV. Violations of Fundamental Rights

International human rights law requires the US government to
protect all prisoners from mistreatment and to provide vulnerable inmates,
especially children and persons with mental disabilities, with heightened
measures of protection. This body of law, as well as international standards
developed to guide its implementation, establishes that people under age 18
have a right to be treated in a manner appropriate to their age and
development.

While the solitary confinement of adolescents is not yet
prohibited under US domestic law, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly suggested
that young people in the criminal justice system are entitled to special
constitutional protections in the context of crime and punishment because they
are developmentally different from adults.

International Law and
Standards

In November 1959, the United Nations General Assembly
adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which recognized that
“the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs
special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as
well as after birth.”[224] The
United States was one of the 78 members of the UN General Assembly that voted
unanimously to adopt the declaration. While the declaration is not binding law,
since that time, the world’s governments, including the United States,
have further elaborated, in treaties and other declarations, the rights of
children accused of crimes.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), to which the United States became a party in 1992, specifically
acknowledges the need for special treatment of children in the criminal justice
system and emphasizes the importance of their rehabilitation.[225] Article 10 requires the
separation of child offenders from adults and the provision of treatment
appropriate to their age and legal status. Article 14(4), which was
co-sponsored by the United States, requires that criminal procedures for children charged with
crimes “take account of the age and the desirability of promoting their
rehabilitation.”[226] The ICCPR emphasizes
age-differentiated, positive measures for child offenders and education,
rehabilitation, and reintegration over punishment.[227]

Both the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture and Other,
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) prohibit
“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”[228]
In addition, article 10 of the ICCPR stipulates, “All persons deprived of
their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent
dignity of the human person.”[229] For treatment to be humane, it
must be appropriate to age and legal status.[230] The vulnerability and
immaturity of juvenile offenders renders a wider range of treatment potentially
cruel, inhuman, or degrading, and such treatment, in turn, can have a much more
profound effect on the body and mind of a developing child than on an adult.

It is precisely because imprisonment is such an inherently
severe sanction that governmental decisions to impose it are subject to human
rights constraints. The ICCPR recognizes that all persons (including young
people) deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with
respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.[231]

When the United States ratified the ICCPR, it attached a
limiting reservation providing that

The policy and practice of the United States are generally
in compliance with and supportive of the Covenant’s provisions regarding treatment
of juveniles in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, the United States
reserves the right, in exceptional circumstances, to treat juveniles as adults,
notwithstanding paragraphs 2 (b) and 3 of article 10 and paragraph 4 of article
14.[232]

The drafting history of this reservation indicates that it
should be interpreted narrowly. The reservation was intended to permit—on
an “exceptional” basis—the trial of children as adults and
the incarceration of children and adults in the same prison facilities.

The United States, as a co-sponsor of Article 14, was keenly
aware of the breadth and scope of its language. There is nothing in its
reservation to suggest that the United States sought to reserve the right to
treat children as harshly as adults on a regular or frequent basis, or to
disregard the special needs and vulnerabilities of children. To the extent the
reservation is interpreted broadly, it risks creating a loophole for violations
of children’s basic rights. To be fully consistent with what it has
agreed to elsewhere regarding children’s rights, the United States should
withdraw the reservation, and refuse to use it to justify actions that
otherwise would violate the ICCPR.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which the
United States has signed but not yet ratified, explicitly addresses the
particular rights and needs of children.[233]
Underpinning several of the treaty’s provisions is the fundamental
recognition of the child’s potential for rehabilitation. The CRC requires
that a state’s decision to incarcerate a child “shall be used only
asa measure of last resort
and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”[234] A child who has committed a
crime is to be treated in a manner that takes into account “the
child’s age and the desirability of promoting the child’s
reintegration and the child’s assuming a constructive role in
society.”[235] States are to use a variety of
measures to address the situation of children in conflict with the law,
including “care, guidance and supervision orders; counseling; probation;
foster care; education and vocational training programmes and other
alternatives to institutional care.”[236] The
treaty also anticipates the need for regular and accessible procedures in which
a child can “challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her
liberty.”[237]

International human rights law also affirms the right of
family unity.[238] The
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (which the US
has signed, but not yet ratified) guarantees all persons a right to education
and to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.[239]

The Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(CRPD), which the Senate was actively considering for ratification as this
report was published, also states that young people with disabilities,
including mental disabilities (long-term mental health problems) or
intellectual disabilities (sometimes called developmental disabilities), retain
the right to full enjoyment “of all human rights and fundamental
freedoms, on an equal basis with other [youth],” including when deprived
of their liberty.[240]

Various international standards provide additional detail
regarding precisely how governments should ensure that this range of rights be
safeguarded in practice.[241]

With regard to solitary confinement, the United Nations
Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (Riyadh Guidelines)
describe punitive solitary confinement of young people under age 18 as cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment.[242] The
Committee on the Rights of the Child, which interprets the CRC, has also
suggested that the punitive solitary confinement of young people under age 18
is cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.[243] The
United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty
reiterates this conclusion.[244] A
number of treaty and regional bodies have suggested that the prolonged solitary
confinement of both adults and children can constitute cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment.[245]

Most recently, the special rapporteur on torture, in his
report to the General Assembly, called for an absolute ban on solitary
confinement for young people under age 18:

The Special Rapporteur holds the view that the imposition
of solitary confinement, of any duration, on juveniles is cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment and violates article 7 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and article 16 of the Convention against Torture.[246]

This proposed absolute ban reflects an agreement that
solitary confinement is an affront to the humanity and vulnerability of any
child. The special rapporteur also called for an absolute ban on solitary
confinement of those with mental disabilities because the adverse effects are
especially significant for persons with serious mental health problems.[247]
Young people under age 18 with mental disabilities are therefore doubly vulnerable,
given both their age and developmental needs and their disability.

With regard to the other deprivations experienced by young
people in solitary confinement, international standards similarly provide
additional detail. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the
Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules), among other
international standards, provide that while in custody, adolescents
“shall receive care, protection and all necessary individual
assistance,” which must extend to psychological, medical, and physical
care and be differentiated by age and gender-specific needs.[248]
These standards emphasize education, family contact, and access to
developmentally-appropriate programming aimed at supporting growth and at
reintegrating young people into society.

Domestic professional standards suggest that adult
facilities should not house young people under age 18.[249]
These standards also echo international standards with regard to access to
physical and mental health care, with the American Correctional Association
(ACA) recommending that in jails, “[all] inmates have unimpeded access to
a continuum of health care services,” including preventative care, and
that inmates should “have access to twenty-four hour emergency medical,
dental, and mental health services.”[250] The
ACA also recommends that adult facility classification systems and
programming should “meet the physical, social, and emotional
needs” of young people and explicitly highlights the importance of
training and specialization in the areas of “educational
programming,” “adolescent development,” “crisis
prevention and intervention,” “cognitive-behavioral
interventions,” and “social-skills training.”[251]

Human Rights Violations

Our research establishes both that young people under age 18
are subjected to solitary confinement, often for prolonged periods, and that
the conditions that accompany solitary confinement frequently fail to meet the
psychological, physical, social, and developmental needs of adolescents. These
failures constitute violations of fundamental rights in a number of
circumstances.

Any prolonged physical and social isolation of young people
raises serious human rights concerns. Whether and when a particular case
violates international human rights law is based on an individual analysis of
the characteristics and needs of a particular young person and the conditions
and duration of confinement. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other UN
bodies have stated that the solitary confinement (physical and social isolation
of 22-24 hours per day for 1 day or more) of young people under age 18, for any
duration, constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
recognize that in any particular case, an analysis of the individual
circumstances and conditions of confinement may be impractical. Given the
nature of incarceration, as well as the needs, characteristics, and
vulnerability of young people, we endorse the view that there is no
reason—administrative, protective, punitive, or medical—to hold a
young person for 22-24 hours per day for 1 day or more in social and physical
isolation, even when it is necessary to separate a young person from the
general population.

Such treatment violates the obligation to treat young people
deprived of their liberty with humanity and respect for their inherent human
dignity and status as children under the ICCPR and the CRC, and can amount to
torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under the ICCPR, CAT, and the
CRC.

Even if the solitary confinement of young people were not
considered an inherent violation of the rights of young people under age 18,
and even in cases where it may not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment, the conditions and deprivations that often accompany it entail
violations of other fundamental rights.

Young people told us graphically how they felt solitary
confinement aggravated or precipitated anguish and mental health problems.
Officials often fail to provide mental health services and care to young people
in solitary confinement, whether they are experiencing stress, mental
disability, or even acute or repeated crises. They also often fail to intervene
in these circumstances to end solitary confinement. These failures constitute
violations of the rights of young people to be treated with humanity and
respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, the rights of adolescents
to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and the
rights of young people to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment. Failures of officials to maintain adequate preventative,
age-differentiated health services, or to intervene to prevent a foreseeable
successful suicide, would additionally constitute a violation of the right to
life.[252]

Young people in solitary confinement are frequently only
allowed out of their cell for one hour each day. In some facilities, they are
only allowed to “exercise” indoors in a hallway or common area. In
other facilities, they have access to a small fenced exercise area outdoors. In
a few facilities, young people reported they were unable to access any physical
exercise. Young people also reported difficulty accessing adequately nutritious
food to support physical development. Young people also reported experiencing a
range of physical changes while held in solitary confinement. Failure to foster
conditions of confinement that promote healthy growth and physical development,
or conditions of confinement which cause deterioration of physical health, can
also violate the right of young people deprived of their liberty to be treated
with humanity and respect for their inherent dignity, as well as the right to
be free from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Young people in many facilities cannot contact their
families regularly while in solitary, either literally by touch, or in other
ways. Youth are often denied adequate or appropriate education, or sometimes
any educational programming at all. Programming to promote social development
is also sometimes entirely absent. These deprivations pertain also to young
people in solitary who have mental disabilities. These failures on the part of
officials can amount to a denial of the rights to be treated with humanity and
respect for one’s human dignity, the right to family unity, the right to
education, and the right to rehabilitation.

US Law

US constitutional law does not currently prohibit solitary
confinement, including for young people. Nearly every court to consider the
solitary confinement of adults with serious mental disabilities has found the
practice to be unconstitutional.[253] The US
Department of Justice, when it has investigated the isolation and segregation
of adolescents in adult facilities, has suggested that there are constitutional
limits related to the physical and social isolation of youth with regard to
conditions, duration, and process.[254] But
there is no jurisprudence that specifically analyzes and finds unconstitutional
the solitary confinement of young people in adult jails and prisons.[255]
However, in almost all jurisdictions, there are a variety of legal doctrines
that distinguish between young people under age 18 and adults. As the Supreme
Court has explained,

The law has historically reflected the same assumption that
children characteristically lack the capacity to exercise mature judgment and
possess only an incomplete ability to understand the world around them. Like
this Court’s own generalizations, the legal disqualifications placed on
children as a class— e.g., limitations on their ability to
alienate property, enter a binding contract enforceable against them, and marry
without parental consent—exhibit the settled understanding that the
differentiating characteristics of youth are universal.[256]

In the past decade, the United States Supreme Court has
repeatedly acknowledged that in the criminal justice context, youth are
entitled to greater constitutional protections than adults. In four recent
decisions regarding the death penalty, interrogations, and life without parole,
the court has affirmed that people under age 18 are still developing and
are inherently less culpable than adults.[257] This
reasoning applies with equal force in the context of solitary confinement.

Federal courts have already recognized that for certain
vulnerable populations, such as those with severe mental health problems,
solitary confinement constitutes a violation of the Eighth Amendment as a cruel
and unusual punishment. There is also a growing body of law stating that young
people are such a vulnerable population because of the unique challenges they
face when subjected to solitary confinement. And the Supreme Court has already
recognized that the punishment of children must take into account their age and
special developmental needs and capacity for change. Taking all this into
account, solitary confinement should not be inflicted on youth in the same way
that it is applied to adults. Failure to take age into account, and subjecting young
people to solitary confinement, should therefore be found to violate the
constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

V. Alternatives to the Solitary Confinement of
Youth

Young people in conflict with the law can be among the most complex
and demanding group of individuals to house, manage, protect, and care for. The
challenge is all the more daunting for officials with limited budgets and in
facilities designed, and with staff trained, to house and manage adults. Some
officials respond in the same way to every form of misconduct: through
punishment. Solitary confinement can sometimes appear to be a simple solution
to keeping everyone safe in overcrowded, short-staffed facilities that have
little programming to offer inmates. But the imposition of solitary confinement
is never necessary in the management of people under age 18 and can have dire
consequences.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
have found accord between the views of some corrections and mental health
experts that facilities can, and should, manage and detain adolescents without
subjecting them to any form of solitary confinement.

Getting Kids Out of
Adult Facilities

A significant number of adult facilities across the United
States rely on solitary confinement when detaining and managing young people.
An initial important step to reducing the numbers of adolescents harmed by the
practice would be to move people under age 18 out of adult facilities and into
juvenile facilities.

Although there is evidence to suggest that some facilities
in the juvenile justice system still use various forms of prolonged isolation,
including solitary confinement, when detaining and managing young people, there
are other systems that rarely use prolonged isolation. For example, a recent
study of the Missouri juvenile system found that it used isolation hundreds of
time less often than juvenile facilities in Ohio.[258]
Additionally, every set of best practice standards for juvenile facilities
proposes maximum limits on various forms of isolation that are far below the
durations of solitary confinement experienced by the young people interviewed
for this report and by young people in adult facilities across the nation.[259]

The vast majority of facilities in the juvenile justice
system are staffed and resourced to provide for adolescent needs in a much more
comprehensive way because they are designed to house and manage young people.

Reviewing and Reforming

Managing youth in the
juvenile justice system will always be the best option. But in some
jurisdictions, where reform of state law is necessary before all young people
can be returned to the juvenile justice system, adult facilities can
take significant measures to reduce the prevalence, duration, and harmful
consequences of solitary confinement without embarking on sweeping reforms.

Jails and prisons can review existing policies and
practices, including disciplinary procedures, and modify them to reflect
differences in how they apply to youth and adults. Officials can instruct and
train staff to view and treat youth differently from adults, including in
designing and implementing services and programming, as well as in assessment,
diagnosis, and classification.

Training and Staffing

Officials repeatedly described to us the importance of
mentorship and adequate supervision to maintain order and protect all inmates.
Facilities must have appropriate numbers of properly trained and adequately
supervised staff.[260] To
provide for the full range of the needs and vulnerabilities of young people,
staffing must include specialized service providers, like social workers and
mental health professionals.

As one corrections official,
who manages a prison for youthful offenders in the adult system, described,

If we do what we do and do it well here, we are able to
provide some of the mentorship they wouldn’t be able to get at another
facility because we are staffed heavier. In a typical adult jail, they would
have about half of the staff that we do here on a unit. We have enough staff to
interact with them as much as possible—to provide that type of mentoring
and leadership.… We have twice the complement of case managers. We have
treatment specialists; two to three times the amount of corrections officers.
One of the things we do well is just the amount [of staff].”[261]

Another stated,

[Youth] are high maintenance. Half the battle [is] you have
to know about them; about their family, what kind of history they have. When
they understand that, it is half the battle.… Just the fact that you know
their name and know something about them, there is no substitute for the
rapport building.[262]

Programming and Activities

Whether housed in small or large groups, one way to
effectively manage young people is by providing significant levels of programming
and activities in which they can invest their energy and attention. For
example, although officials at the Pine Grove youthful offender facility in
Pennsylvania described using solitary confinement to manage some youth, they
described high levels of activities as one of the important elements of
managing other youth in their facility. As one official stated, “If you
don’t create something for them to do, their minds race at 90 miles an
hour; they are harder to manage if you don’t keep them busy.”[263]

The New York City Department of Corrections has recently
announced plans to reform the programming it provides to adolescents held in
general population on Rikers Island.[264] The
Department’s current goal is,

… [T]o create a wrap-around environment. The question
is, after the school day, how do we sustain the focus on problem-solving? This
is a cognitive skills program … we have trained members of the school
staff. We have also trained our correctional staff and our adolescents so that
everyone has the same language and expectations for problem-solving. There are
group sessions that happen in the evenings in the housing units so things
don’t fester—to develop more pro-social problem-solving skills. The
program also features a component on using leisure time wisely. So …
[youth are] learning to make good choices throughout the whole of the day.[265]

It remains to be seen whether additional reforms at Rikers
will address the developmental needs of youth held in solitary confinement
there. Young people who had experienced solitary confinement across the United
States, and who had spent months or years in adult facilities while under age
18, frequently identified idleness as the primary source of conflict, and hence
rule violations, in jails and prisons.

Assessment, Diagnosis, and Planning

Experts stress the importance of assessing youth coming into
and staying in adult facilities (and of being able to recognize mental and
intellectual disabilities) to provide appropriately for individual young people
and ensure rehabilitation. As one psychiatric expert with experience in adult
and juvenile facilities described, this can take the form of repeated
re-classification:

“[The] risk and needs [of teenagers] change over
time. With teenagers, they need to have a good risk and needs assessment and
they need that every six months to a year. Then a behavior plan that matches
their risk and needs. What you want to do is target their highest criminal
recidivism risk and then target their highest needs. Maybe this kid has an emerging
mental illness; maybe they have a low I.Q.; maybe they malinger a lot. If we
could do that, then we could really help this person grow and progress.”[266]

Disciplinary Measures

Solitary confinement is also not necessary as a disciplinary
measure, and experts have pointed to alternatives, including through the
establishment of a system of graduated sanctions. Such a system would require
changes though. As the former Commissioner of Corrections of New York City and
the state of Pennsylvania stated,

There aren’t a whole lot of tools to deal with
adolescents as things stand. So there aren’t a whole lot of things to
control. If there were activities, then something coveted to participate in,
you could take that away.… Restricting a kid from going to the movie tonight
may have as powerful an impact on controlling their behavior … there
aren’t a sufficient number of activities that are viewed as desirable
that could be used as an intermediate sanction where sanctions are necessary.[267]

To be effective, experts also point out that disciplinary
measures must be immediate and proportional to the behavior, and connected to
programming. Even officials who described using solitary confinement in some
contexts, described being able to avoid it in other contexts. As one state
prison official described,

We have trained our staff to go to immediate sanctions,
logical sanctions, immediate and programmatic sanctions. What we have found is
that if you address the issue immediately and if the consequence is immediate,
we can change behavior. We have focused a lot on that with our younger
offenders.[268]

Even some officials who reported
frequently using solitary confinement as a disciplinary response identified
very different alternatives:

If you can get in quick enough, it would be the equivalent
of “go to your room.” A lot of these [conflicts] start small. If
you have one youth who is monopolizing the channel-changer [for the housing
area television], the option now … if he does not respond is to infract
him [which results in punitive segregation]. What I prefer is “go to your
room young man” and then to create a mechanism for review—so every
two hours you double back and it wouldn’t go any longer than six hours (so
that it doesn’t go beyond a de facto punitive segregation in your
housing unit). So when you are ready to come out, all is forgiven.[269]

Borrowing from Juvenile Facilities

The most progressive and innovative alternatives to solitary
confinement that respond better to adolescent needs and development come from
the juvenile justice system. As one expert describes, “[Corrections officials in adult facilities] haven't thought about
different ways to deal with these acting out behaviors, to realize they are
normal behaviors and are teachable moments to teach [youth] to react in a
different way to stimuli.”[270] Officials feel that some of the best practices from
juvenile facilities could work for youth in adult facilities.

Rewarding Positive Behavior

One fundamental shift that would help is to move from
managing youth solely through punitive disciplinary measures to focus on
teaching and reinforcing positive behaviors. As one official at a juvenile
facility described,

What we have found in all our programs is that the best way
to influence behavior is positive reinforcement. You encourage good behavior by
incentivizing. What we have found as part of our philosophy [of] behavior
management is that the most important thing is to get kids to accept
responsibility for their actions and think about it and change. If you put a
kid in isolation of any kind, what you are essentially doing is letting the kid
off the hook. He can spend all of his time blaming you.… If you want to
get kids to do something that you want them to do, reinforce good behavior.…
We don’t have any punishments in our program. If you do something bad you
are held accountable. That might mean you pay back the community in some way or
it might mean that you continue in program longer than you expected because you
are not getting it. So the behavior is the report card.… The last thing you want to do to kids who are
struggling with some very hard issues is make them be alone. That’s just
stupid. I don’t know any other way to put it. Putting them in a place by
themselves is just stupid. And it’s harmful.[271]

Another official at an adult jail stated,

If you deal with these teenagers at all, you know that the
more you lock them up and the less they have to do, the most trouble they get
in. Locking them up becomes counterproductive. So we try to use other, creative
ways to exercise discipline, as opposed to locking them up and letting them sit
idle.[272]

Small Group Living

One technique that experts often identify as important to
reinforce positive behaviors in young people, is to create a small community in
which youth can raise concerns and have them addressed. In Missouri, for
example, this process is structured around a discussion circle:

[A]t any time, youth are free to call a circle—in
which all team members [residents] sit or stand facing one another—to
raise concerns or voice complaints about the behavior of other group members
(or to share good news). Thus, at any moment, the focus can shift from the
activity at hand—education, exercise, clean up, a bathroom break—to
a lengthy discussion of behaviors and attitudes. Staff members also call
circles frequently to communicate and enforce expectations regarding safety,
courtesy, and respect, and also to recognize positive behaviors.[273]

Limited Appropriate Uses of Segregation and
Isolation

There is no question that corrections officials have a duty
to protect the safety and wellbeing—and to safeguard the human
rights—of staff and the entire inmate population. In some cases, certain
forms of short-term segregation and isolation may be a valid tool for
corrections officials to use in pursuing this particular goal. Yet, any use of
segregation and isolation of young people must be tightly regulated, monitored,
used for the shortest duration possible, and only to the extent strictly
necessary to maintain the immediate safety of the young person or others.[274]

At all times, the goal of any form of protective isolation
should be to return an individual to general population. Steps should be taken
to limit social and physical isolation. Facilities must ensure that young
people are not denied access to developmentally appropriate treatment,
services, or programming. Under no circumstances should practices be extreme
enough to constitute solitary confinement.

If officials find they are using segregation and isolation
frequently for particular adolescents, they should work with them to identify
and address the underlying causes and find alternative solutions.

Interrupting Disciplinary
Crises

Limited segregation and isolation can also be an appropriate
intervention to prevent harm to an individual young person, to other
adolescents, or to staff. But experts stress that whenever youth are isolated,
there must be a therapeutic goal and intervention. As Dr. Cheryl Wills
described,

Once the crisis has been de-escalated, you start the
rehabilitation again. So just because [the youth] had a crisis does not justify
depriving them of treatment and rehabilitation. The containment serves a
purpose of containing the behavior, but then you start again. So the key is the
rehabilitation. Whether or not a person has a mental illness, they need
rehabilitation. If you just do the restraint and retribution, but not the
rehabilitation, they are not going to change their behavior.[275]

Short-term Protective Segregation and Isolation

Even in specialized facilities designed to hold young people
under age 18, some form of short-term segregation and isolation may be
necessary to protect individual adolescents from others. But, as Human Rights
Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have stated elsewhere, such
isolation must be for as brief a period as possible and not subject to
extensions, lasting only until an alternative placement can be arranged.[276]

Diverting Youth to Specialized Facilities

Psychological experts stressed the importance of identifying
the underlying causes of behaviors that lead to misconduct or a need to
segregate or isolate. Some experts also emphasized that when those causes
involve mental health problems or a mental disability, and when facilities
cannot manage adolescent behavior, transferring young people to a specialized
mental health facility may be appropriate. The American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatrists recently issued a policy statement urging a ban on
solitary confinement and promoting the intervention of a qualified mental
health professional after 24 hours.[277] As one
of its drafters told us,

There really should be no reason that a child should be in
any type of solitary confinement for any duration. In my opinion, if they are
in solitary for more than a day [24 hours] you need to find another facility
for them or [implement] some kind of mental health intervention.[278]

Recommendations

The federal government and state governments should end the
practice of subjecting young people to solitary confinement. Legislative action
is crucial; but even in the absence of legislation, a range of actors,
including jail and prison officials, can and should take significant steps
towards this goal.

Ending the solitary confinement of young people requires
broad reforms in five areas. First, the solitary confinement of people under
age 18 should be prohibited in law and policy. Second, young people should not
be held in adult jails and prisons or managed with policies and practices
designed for adult inmates. Third, all forms of segregation and isolation of young
people, even those not long enough to constitute solitary confinement, should
be strictly limited and regulated, regardless of where they are held. Fourth,
all facilities that detain young people should publicly report on the use of
segregation and isolation. Finally, the US government should ratify human
rights treaties protecting young people without reservations.

The following detailed recommendations address each of these
policy areas:

At the State Level

State Legislatures

Prohibit
the solitary confinement of young people under age 18 in adult and juvenile
facilities for any purpose.

End
the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the
adult criminal justice system; where this is not immediately feasible, mandate
that all people under age 18 be held in the juvenile justice
system—before trial and after conviction or adjudication—no matter
how they are charged; and appropriate funds, as necessary, to provide for
changes in population in juvenile facilities.

Strictly
limit segregation and isolation of young people under age 18, even if for periods not long enough to constitute solitary
confinement.

Require
that people under age 18 held in any form of segregation and isolation,
including solitary confinement, and particularly young people with mental or
intellectual disabilities, be treated in a manner consistent with their
medical, psychological, developmental, educational, social, and rehabilitative
needs; appropriate funds, as necessary, to provide for changes in services and
programming.

Require
periodic monitoring and review of solitary confinement, segregation, and
isolation policies, practices, and procedures at every correctional facility by
an independent and qualified reviewer; ensure that the reports generated from
these reviews are available to the public.

Require
adult and juvenile facilities to monitor and publicly report:

The rates and
durations of any form of segregation and isolation, including solitary
confinement.

The reasons
why youth are subjected to any form of segregation and isolation, including
solitary confinement.

Information
about the quality and availability of age-differentiated programming and
services for young people under age 18, including young people with mental or
intellectual disabilities, held in any form of segregation and isolation,
including solitary confinement.

State Prison Systems and
County Jails

Prohibit
the solitary confinement of young people under age 18 for any purpose.

Establish
specialized facilities or sections of facilities to house young people under
age 18, including young people at high risk of victimization, so that they are
not held in prolonged segregation and isolation, including solitary
confinement.

Conclude
memoranda of understanding or contracts with state juvenile facilities to house
young people under age 18; and with state juvenile or other medical or mental
health facilities to house young people under age 18 who require specialized
medical or psychological care.

Develop
specialized disciplinary rules for young people under age 18 that avoid
prolonged segregation and isolation, that expressly take age and needs into
account, and that provide a range of behavioral management techniques,
including positive behavioral management and differentiated and proportional
sanctions.

Strictly
limit the segregation and isolation of young people under age 18, even if for periods not long
enough to constitute solitary confinement.

Ensure
that all young people under age 18, and particularly young people with mental
or intellectual disabilities, in any form of confinement, including segregation
and isolation, have access to:

Means of
contact with their family, including contact visits, telephone, and written
communication.

Adequate and
age-differentiated educational programming and services.

Adequate and
age-differentiated social, developmental, and rehabilitative programming and
services.

Developmentally-appropriate
levels of social interaction with other young people and adults.

Ensure
adequate staffing levels to manage young people under age 18.

Provide
specialized training to all staff on managing adolescents, and particularly on
the use of verbal de-escalation techniques, and on identifying and assisting
young people with mental or intellectual disabilities and histories of trauma
and abuse.

Provide
additional training to staff who manage young people in segregation and
isolation on identifying and assisting young people with mental or intellectual
disabilities and histories of trauma and abuse.

Provide
specialized training to medical and mental health staff who care for young
people under age 18.

Make
data on rates and durations, and justifications for the use of segregation and
isolation, including solitary confinement, publicly available.

Publish
all disciplinary rules, policies, and procedures related to young people under
age 18 in a publicly available forum.

Conclude
memoranda of understanding with state juvenile, medical, and mental health
facilities, education systems, and between county and state facilities, to
ensure transfer of data regarding physical and mental health histories,
identified mental or intellectual disabilities, and histories of trauma and
abuse.

Notify
and consult with family members, as well as counsel for represented youth, when
young people under age 18 are placed in any form of segregation and isolation,
including solitary confinement, or have a significant medical or mental health
event.

State Departments of Education

Issue
clear guidance mandating the provision of adequate and age-differentiated
educational programming and services to all young people under age 18 in
segregation and isolation in adult jails or prisons, including those with
mental or intellectual disabilities.

State Departments of Health

Issue
clear guidance mandating the provision of adequate and age-differentiated
physical and mental health care, as well as social, developmental, and
rehabilitative programming and services to all young people under age 18,
particularly those with mental or intellectual disabilities, in segregation and
isolation in adult jails or prisons.

State Juvenile and Adult
Criminal Court Judges

Hold a
hearing on conditions and use of segregation and isolation, including solitary
confinement, in the place of detention when considering transfer of
jurisdiction to the adult criminal justice system and before sentencing.

Decline
to transfer young people to the jurisdiction of the adult criminal justice
system.

Affirmatively
order that young people be held in the juvenile justice system pre-trial or
post-adjudication or conviction.

Require
prosecutors to submit data on the use and duration of segregation and
isolation, including solitary confinement, before sentencing.

Before
sentencing, require a medical and mental health evaluation of the effects of
any periods of segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement,
experienced by young people.

State Prosecutors

Decline
to exercise authority to charge young people as if adults or to request or
order detention of young people under age 18 in adult jails or prisons.

Affirmatively
request that young people be held in the juvenile justice system pre-trial or
post-adjudication or conviction.

Seek
data from the pre-trial detention facility on the use and duration of
segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement, and disclose this
information to the court and defense counsel.

Seek
a medical and mental health evaluation of the effects of any periods of
segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement, and disclose this
information to the court and defense counsel.

Defense Attorneys

At
trial, raise the use of segregation and isolation, including solitary
confinement, in the place of pre-trial and post-conviction or post-adjudication
detention.

Challenge
the solitary confinement of young people, including through administrative
appeals of the imposition of solitary confinement, and conditions litigation.

File
a motion that young people be detained pre-trial and post-conviction or
adjudication in the juvenile justice system.

Request
to be notified when young people are placed in any form of segregation and
isolation, including solitary confinement.

At the Federal Level

US Congress

Prohibit
the solitary confinement of young people under age 18 for any purpose in federal
custody.

Hold
hearings on the solitary confinement of young people.

Use
the appropriations process to encourage standard-setting and capacity-building
around the treatment of young people, and to press for prohibitions of solitary
confinement of young people under age 18 nationwide.

Appropriate
funds and direct the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to
investigate the solitary confinement of young people under age 18 in adult
jails and prisons as a violation of US domestic law and US human rights treaty
obligations.

Amend the
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to close the loopholes that
leave young people under age 18 charged as if adults without federal
protections; define “juvenile” to include any young person under
age 18.

Amend
the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to prohibit the use of
solitary confinement for young people under age 18.

Appropriate
funds and direct the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs
to monitor the conditions of confinement of young people under age 18 held in
any form of segregation and isolation in adult facilities; and to ensure that
young people under age 18 are not held in solitary confinement in an effort to
comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act or the Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention Act.

Appropriate
funds, such as through amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act, and direct the Department of Education to monitor the provision
of educational programming to all young people under age 18, and in particular,
to young people with mental and intellectual disabilities, held in segregation
and isolation in adult jails or prisons.

Appropriate
funds, such as through amendments to the Children’s Health Act, and
direct the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor the provision of
mental and physical health services to all young people under age 18, and in
particular, to young people with mental disabilities, held in segregation and
isolation in adult jails or prisons.

US Department of Justice

Bureau of Prisons

Modify existing contracts with secure juvenile facilities to
prohibit the solitary confinement of young people under age 18.

Office of Justice Programs

Publish a policy document supporting a prohibition of the
solitary confinement of young people under age 18 and promoting best practices
for the detention and management of young people without use of prolonged
segregation and isolation.

Develop
grant-making and capacity-building tools, and particularly those aimed at
implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, to assist facilities
implementing protections for youth while also limiting segregation and
isolation and prohibiting solitary confinement of young people under age 18.

Expand the scope of information-gathering for state compliance
monitoring under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to include
data about the imposition of segregation or isolation, including solitary
confinement, on young people under age 18.

Civil Rights Division

Declare the solitary confinement of young people under age 18 in
adult prisons and jails, as practiced, as unconstitutional and a violation of
international human rights law and urge prohibition of the solitary confinement
of young people for any purpose.

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Amend current and future Bureau of Justice Statistics data collections
to include questions about when and whether young people are placed in
segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement, in adult jails and
prisons.

Department of Education

Issue
guidance or rules clarifying the application of the Individuals with
Disabilities Act to young people with mental and intellectual disabilities held
in segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement.

Develop
grant-making and capacity-building tools to promote facilities providing
age-appropriate and out-of-cell educational programming to young people under
age 18 held in segregation and isolation, including solitary confinement.

Department of Health and Human
Services and the Centers for Disease Control

Issue
guidance clarifying the physical and mental health consequences of segregation
and isolation, including solitary confinement, on young people.

Develop
grant-making and capacity-building tools to promote facilities providing
age-appropriate and out-of-cell physical and mental health services to young
people under age 18 held in segregation and isolation, including solitary
confinement.

US Senate and Executive Branch

The President should submit to the Senate and the Senate should
give advice and consent to:

The ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities without reservation.

The ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
without reservation

A formal notification of the withdrawal of reservations to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including ICCPR Article
10, and to the Convention against Torture.

State and National Medical,
Mental Health, Corrections, and Jail Associations and Standard-Setting Bodies

Issue
policy statements supporting a prohibition of the solitary confinement of young
people under age 18.

Amend
standards for juvenile and adult facilities to prohibit the solitary
confinement of young people under age 18.

Promote
best practices and resources for facilities that detain and manage young people
under age 18 focused on the development of specialized policies and procedures
that:

Avoid
prolonged segregation and isolation, that expressly take age and needs into
account, and that provide a range of behavioral management techniques.

Mandate that
young people under age 18 held in any form of segregation and isolation,
including solitary confinement, and particularly young people with mental or
intellectual disabilities, be treated in a manner consistent with their
medical, psychological, developmental, educational, social, and rehabilitative
needs; appropriate funds, as necessary, to provide for changes in services and
programming.

Require
monitoring and reporting of the rates and durations of any form of segregation
and isolation, including solitary confinement, and the quality and availability
of age-differentiated programming and services for young people.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Ian Kysel, Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human
Rights Watch and the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties
Union. Jo Becker, senior advocate with the Children’s Rights Division at
Human Rights Watch, participated in one of the research missions. Much of the
data analysis for this report was done by Brian Root, Quantitative Analyst in the
US Program at Human Rights Watch. Significant research assistance was provided
by Samantha Reiser and Vikram Shah, associates in the US Program at
Human Rights Watch; as well as Elana Bauer, Elana Bildner, Ruth Monteil,
Zachery Morris, and Halina Shiffman-Schilo, interns in the US Program at Human
Rights Watch; and Zoha Khalili, Tom McDermott, and Ariel Werner, interns in the Human
Rights Program, National Prison Project, and Advocacy Division of the American
Civil Liberties Union.

Most importantly, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union wish to thank each of the individuals who shared their
experiences growing up in adult jails and prisons, and who spoke with courage
and dignity about the challenges they faced when subjected to solitary confinement.
We are deeply indebted to the many who felt, like Nicholas M., that, “If
my story can stop another kid from coming [to solitary confinement], then
there’s a small piece of it. Hopefully my pain serve[s] some
purpose.”[279]

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
would like to thank the American Civil Liberties Affiliates in Colorado,
Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin for their
support and assistance in making this research possible. This report was
significantly enhanced by the advice of experts at the Campaign For Youth
Justice, and the Center on Children’s Law and Policy. We are also
grateful to the Law Offices of Deborah LaBelle, The Colorado Juvenile Defender
Coalition, Florida Institutional Legal Services, the Children’s Law
Center, Inc.; and to public defenders in Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, who shared their invaluable expertise and time
with Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. We particularly
appreciate the assistance of family members, social workers, attorneys, and
advocates who provided Human Rights Watch with invaluable information,
insights, and expertise.

Human Rights Watch would also like to thank those state and
local jail and prison officials, corrections experts, and psychological and
psychiatric experts and officials who spoke candidly about the challenges they
face when managing and detaining young people in adult facilities, and their
perspectives on the prevalence and effects of solitary confinement.

Appendix 1: Mapping Youth in Adult Jails and
Prisons

Neither most states nor the federal government track or
report comprehensive data on youth held in adult jails and prisons. In the United States, there are three main criminal
detention systems: the local (state) jail system, the state prison system, and
the federal prison system. Data from each of these systems is gathered and
disseminated separately by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

State
Jails

The BJS produces nation-wide
estimates of young people under age 18
incarcerated in state and local jails in the Jail Inmates at Midyear report.[280] The report provides an estimate of the number of young
people under age 18 held in the system on June
30.[281] In any given year, young people under age 18 make up approximately 1 percent of the
inmate population of local jails, according to BJS estimates. The majority of young
people held in local jails are being held as if
adults, and are subject to charge and trial in the criminal justice system.
Typically, only 14 to 25 percent of the young people in local jails are being held as juveniles, pending a
delinquency adjudication or transfer to a juvenile facility (see below). While,
as discussed below, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union have found that young people under age 18 held as adults typically spend long
periods in detention, it is likely that those held as juveniles may spend only
very short periods in adult facilities: a few hours or a day.[282] 2011 saw the fewest number of young people under age 18 in jails in recent years, with 5,900
young people under age 18 held at midyear.

The BJS produces no
comprehensive data on the number of young people under age 18 that are admitted to local jail facilities over the course
of a year. But based on the best available data, Human Rights Watch has
produced estimates of the total number of young people under age 18 that are annually admitted to local
jails in the US. We estimate that 93,947 adolescents were admitted into local
adult detention facilities in 2011 (See Table 2, Figure 1).[287]

Figure 1: Young people held in adult jails

Inmates in state prisons
serve median sentences of approximately two years and release rates and
expected time served are very “stable,” according to the BJS.[290] Therefore, the June 30 inmate counts may be used as
baseline estimates for the total number of juveniles entering state prisons
within the year. Combining these estimates with the annual estimates of
juveniles in local jails produces an overall estimate of 139,495 juveniles
admitted to adult correctional facilities in 2010.[291]

State
Prison Systems

The BJS also produces data on
young people under age 18 held in the federal
and state prison systems at mid-year (June 30) and disaggregates this data by
state and gender.[292]In the
most recent year for which data is available (2010), 2,295 young people under age 18 were being held in adult facilities in
state prison systems on June 30. Florida and New York held the highest number
of young people under age 18, with over
200 juvenile inmates imprisoned in each state (though Florida’s numbers
were significantly higher) (Connecticut also held over 200 young people under age 18 in a combined prison-jail system).

Map 3: Youth in adult prisons

This map shows the relative distribution of youth in adult
prisons across the United States.

Table 4: Estimated annual number of young people in adult
jails and prisons

The Legal Landscape

As detailed in the report,
whether young people are held in solitary
confinement depends in part on the legal landscape, and how and at what age
youth are charged or held as if adults.

States charge young people under age 18 as if adults through
a variety of legal mechanisms. Youth charged as if adults—and held at
adult facilities—are sometimes subjected to solitary confinement for a
range of reasons discussed throughout the report. Youth detained in states that
mandate protection for some young people held in adult facilities (such as sight
and sound separation requirements) are sometimes subjected to protective
solitary confinement to achieve this goal.

Statistical
Methodology

Human Rights Watch analyzed six years (2006—2011) of
the BJS’s Annual Survey of Jails data to develop quantitative estimates
regarding young people in local jail facilities. The Survey of Jails asks
facilities to answer three questions regarding young people held on June 30th
of each year: number of male inmates under age 18; number of female inmates
under age 18; and total number of young people under age 18 held as adults. The
BJS then computes a new variable to estimate “Juveniles Held as
Juveniles” in this way: “JUVM” + “JUVF” –
“ADLTJUV.” The methodology should ensure that every person counted
in the “ADLTJUV” variable should also be counted in the
“JUVM” or “JUVF” variables, and the sum of those two
variables should always be greater than the “ADLTJUV”
variable.

However, facilities sometimes incorrectly fill out BJS
surveys and do not include young people under age 18 held as adults in their
total counts for all inmates under the age of 18. Therefore, in these states,
the “Juveniles Held as Juveniles” variable (“JUVM” +
“JUVF” -“ADULTJUV”) results in a negative
number. For these facilities, Human Rights Watch used the larger count of
juveniles held as adults (“ADLTJUV”) as the total count. We counted
these inmates as males under the age of 18 because we could not determine
gender and males account for roughly 94 percent of juvenile jail inmates
annually.[293]

We also generated annual estimates of young people under age
18 admitted to local jails by using data on the number of young people under
age 18 held in jails on June 30th of a given year, as well as
admissions data for the last week of June. We multiplied the percentage of all
inmates on June 30th that were young people under age 18 by the
number of weekly inmate admissions to estimate the number of young people under
age 18 admitted during the week. These estimates allowed for additional upper
and lower percentages of all inmates that were under age 18. This figure was
then multiplied by the number of weeks in the year to estimate the number of
annual admissions, as follows:

Percentage of all inmates that are young people under age 18
(on last day of June) times the number of admissions during last week of June
equals the estimated number of young people admissions during last week times
365 (days) divided by 7 (days) equals the estimate of the number of young
people under age 18 admitted during the year. We produced confidence intervals
by using the annual standard error for young people under age 18 to produce
upper and lower bounds for the number of young people in jail on June 30th
(z-score = 1.96, confidence interval = young people under age 18 count +/-
standard error * 1.96).

We are making two major assumptions with this estimate.
First, we assume that the percentage of inmates that are young people under age
18 on June 30th of every year are representative of the percentage
of inmates that are admitted during the last week of June that are under age
18. There is evidence that the percentage of inmates that are under age 18 does
not fluctuate greatly. In the most recent seven years that the BJS has
collected this data (from 2005 to 2011) the percentage of inmates under age 18
in the facilities sampled has not fluctuated more than 2/10ths of a percent.
Year in and year out, young people under age 18 make up 0.8 to 1.0 percent of
inmates on June 30th. Our second assumption is that the data on
weekly admissions, which comes from the last week of June, is representative of
a typical week and can be used to estimate annual admissions. The BJS used the
2004 Survey of Large Jails to track monthly movements over the course of the
year and has determined that June admission data is a reliable source to
calculate a nationwide annual admission estimate.[294]

We also analyzed the Survey of Jails data to gain a greater
understanding of the distribution of youth inmates across the United States. We
generated the estimates by examining six years (from 2006 to 2011) of Survey of
Jails data to identify unique facilities that housed young people under age 18.
The Survey of Jails is a nationally-representative survey of all local jails,
whether they have held youth or not, and is not a sample of only those
facilities that have held young people under age 18. Therefore it is possible
that in any given year, a jail facility with inmates under age 18 may not have
been selected in the sample. Examining only a single year of the survey would
therefore skew the distribution of young people under age 18 towards larger
facilities, as 268 facilities are included in the sample with certainty
(annually) due to the size of their daily population.

Therefore, we examined six years of surveys and extracted
counts of young people under age 18 held for the most recent year that each facility
was surveyed. We extracted data for 577 unique facilities (312 from 2011, 85
from 2010, 71 from 2009, 43 from2008, 40 from 2007, and 26 from 2006). It is
important to note that this distribution analysis is not an estimate of the
overall distribution of young peopleunder age 18 in jail systems, but a
distribution of unique facilities that reported housing inmates under age 18
during the last six years of the Annual Survey of Jails. The distribution
analysis did not utilize the BJS facility-level weighting variable to weight
the count of young people under age 18. It examined the distribution of inmates
under age 18 reported in surveys by facility, county, and state.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
have found that some Colorado jails and prisons use solitary confinement to
detain and manage young people under age 18 in a range of circumstances. Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union corresponded with or
interviewed 20 individuals who reported being subjected to one or more periods
of solitary confinement while under age 18 in jails in Adams, Arapahoe, Clear
Creek, Denver, El Paso, Jefferson and Park Counties; and in a number of state
prisons.[295] Though
not investigated by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,
officials in Larimer, Pueblo, Washington, and Weld Counties have reported
detaining young people under age 18 in the last six years.[296]
Human Right Watch also interviewed or corresponded with state jail and prison
officials.

The Law and Policy Landscape

Colorado law and policy governing jails and prisons permit
holding young people in various forms of prolonged isolation or segregation
that can constitute solitary confinement.[297]

Colorado Jails

By statute, young people under age 18 charged as if adults
by prosecutorial “direct file” can be held in jails, though
under legal changes that took effect after Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union visited the state, the default place of detention is in
juvenile facilities.[298] Young
people under age 18 can be detained in adult jails only if a state district
court finds that an adult jail is the appropriate place of confinement after
weighing a number of factors, including whether the youth would be deprived of
contact with others in order to separate him or her from adults.[299]
The state requires that youth held in adult jails be physically segregated from
adults.[300] But
there is no prohibition in state law against holding young people in solitary
confinement in adult jails.[301]

Between July 2010 and June 2011, Colorado jails reported
holding 42 young people under age 18 in 7 jails for an average period of 116
days.[302] Jail
officials in Denver, El Paso, and Adams counties reported that youth are subject
to the same disciplinary rules as adults when confined in their facilities.[303]
Officials in El Paso and Denver Counties told Human Rights Watch that young
people under age 18 can be sentenced to time in segregation for disciplinary
infractions, during which they are permitted out of their cell for one hour
each day.[304] Such
conditions constitute solitary confinement.

Colorado Prisons

The Colorado Department of Corrections (CO DOC) holds young
people who are convicted of criminal offenses and sentenced while under age 18.
Youth and adults under age 21 who have been sentenced as “youthful
offenders” are detained in the Youthful Offender System (YOS); some
youth—including many of those sentenced for particularly serious
offenses—are held in mainline prisons.[305] There
is no prohibition in state law against holding youth in solitary confinement in
Colorado prisons. While the CO DOC code of penal discipline does provide for
consideration of “mitigating factors” in findings of guilt for
purposes of disciplinary segregation, it does not require consideration of age,
mental disability, or other special needs, in evaluating guilt or in assessing
sanctions.[306]

CO DOC officials reported that, while they sometimes try to avoid placing young
people in punitive solitary confinement, it is still used as a sanction.[307]
Regarding YOS, officials reported:

We do everything we can not to place
young offenders in solitary confinement or disciplinary segregation. At YOS, we
have the code of penal discipline available to us. But we have trained our
staff to go to immediate sanctions, logical sanctions, immediate and
programmatic sanctions. What we have found is that if you address the issue
immediately and if the consequence is immediate, we can change behavior. We
have focused a lot on that with our younger offenders. To
punish—certainly there is a need to punish. The longest time we can put
someone in segregation is 60 days for a class 1 offense. We try not to use it;
there are reviews every 28 days. The goal is to get them back to programming.[308]

Research Findings

Colorado Jails

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with 15 young people who reported being held in
protective solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Colorado jails.
A number of those young people reported spending the significant
periods—or the entire period of their pre-trial detention—in
protective solitary confinement. Ten young people said they had spent five
months or longer in protective solitary confinement while under age 18. Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed three young
people who reported being held in punitive solitary confinement while in
pre-trial detention in Colorado jails. Two of those young people said they
spent more than one period in punitive solitary confinement of 15 days or more.

Young people held in solitary confinement in Colorado jails
generally described being allowed out of their cell one hour each day into a
day room or common space, generally alone, during which they could shower and
sometimes make phone calls to loved ones. Young people reported being able to
receive visits from loved ones, but four young people told us they were unable to
have contact visits. Three young people said they were unable to access any
reading materials and one youth reported being unable to access writing
materials in his or her cell while in solitary confinement. Three young people
said they had considered suicide; two reported having attempted suicide while
in solitary confinement.

Colorado Prisons

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with nine young people who reported being held in
punitive or administrative solitary confinement while in state prison in
Colorado. A number of those young people told us they had spent significant
periods in administrative solitary confinement, with three young people
reporting having spent four months or longer in administrative solitary
confinement while under age 18. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union interviewed six young people who told us they were held in
punitive solitary confinement while in Colorado prisons. Three of those young
people reported spending more than one period in punitive solitary confinement
of 20 days or more.

Young people held in solitary confinement in Colorado
prisons while under age 18 generally described being allowed out of their cell
one hour each day, generally into an indoor recreation room, and being
permitted a daily shower. Young people reported being able to receive
non-contact visits from loved ones. One young person told us he or she was
classified directly into long-term solitary confinement while under age 18; others
reported beginning periods of administrative solitary confinement while under
age 18 that continued for many years. Young people in long-term administrative
solitary confinement said they were never permitted outdoors.

Avenues for Reform

In spite of these challenges, the legal and policy landscape
in Colorado is shifting in a positive direction. In 2012, Colorado enacted
legislation requiring that youth charged as if adults be held in juvenile
facilities, unless a judge orders otherwise.[309] The
state has not yet reported on how this has affected the population of youth in
adult facilities. The director of the CO DOC has also ordered a review of those
in prolonged solitary confinement in prison, resulting in a significant
reduction of numbers held.[310] The CO
DOC acknowledges that youth are different, and has signaled openness to
additional reform:

The challenge for us is, as we manage [inmates] when they
are younger, how do we manage them … in a way that takes into
consideration where they are at in terms of their age, their impulsivity, their
mental health issues.… Our true goal is to manage inmates so they behave
differently because 97 percent are going to walk out the door and be
somebody’s next door neighbor.… If I had a wish list, it would be
to have the flexibility to have more intensive case management, mental health,
and other programming to keep [youth] engaged in something that can build
positive self-esteem and positive values. At that young age, it is important to
develop a positive view and see a light at the end of the tunnel.[311]

To continue down the road to
reform, Colorado must ensure that young people under age 18 are never subjected
to solitary confinement in jails or in prisons.[312]

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have
found that some Florida jails and prisons use solitary confinement to manage
young people under age 18 in a range of circumstances. Human Rights Watch and
the American Civil Liberties Union corresponded with and interviewed 38
individuals who had been subjected to solitary confinement while under age 18
in jails in Bay, Citrus, Clay, Duval, Escambia, Highlands, Hillsboro, Jackson,
Lee, Leon, Miami, Okaloosa, Okeechobee, Orange, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Polk, and
St. Lucie Counties; and in a number of state prisons. Though not investigated
by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, officials in
Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Charlotte, Collier, Franklin, Gadsen, Hamilton,
Hernando, Lake, Levy, Manatee, Marion, Monroe, Osceola, Pasco, Putnam, Volusia,
Walton, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, and Wakulla Counties have reported
detaining young people under age 18 in the last six years.[313]
Human Right Watch also interviewed or corresponded with jail and prison
officials in the state.

The Law and Policy Landscape

Florida law and policy governing jails and prisons permit
holding young people in various forms of prolonged isolation or segregation
that can constitute solitary confinement.[314]

Florida Jails

By statute, young people under age 18 charged as if adults must
be held in adult jails.[315] The
state requires that young people held in adult jails be prevented from having
sight and sound contact with adults and be held in a separate section of the
jail.[316] A
recent legal change, signed into law in 2011, also allows young people under
age 18 not charged as if adults to be held in Florida jails, though few
jails have yet to exercise this authority.[317] But
there is no prohibition in state law against holding young people in solitary
confinement in adult jails.[318]

In January 2012, Florida jails reported holding 579 young
people under age 18 statewide.[319] Jail
officials in Hernando, Pinellas, and St. Lucie counties reported that youth are
subject to the same disciplinary rules as adults when confined in their
facilities.[320]
Officials in Duval county told Human Rights Watch that young people under age
18 can be sentenced to time in segregation for disciplinary infractions, during
which they are permitted out of their cell for less than two hours each day.[321]
Such conditions constitute solitary confinement.

Florida Prisons

The Florida Department of Corrections (FL DOC) holds young
people who have been convicted of criminal offenses and sentenced while under
age 18. Youth and adults under age 21 who have been sentenced or designated as
“youthful offenders” are detained in the youthful offender
facilities (where young people and adults under age 19 are separated from older
youthful offenders); some youth—including many of those sentenced for
particularly serious offenses—are held in mainline prisons.[322]
In fiscal year 2010-2011, the FL DOC reported holding 276 young people under
age 18 (although 398 young people under age 18 were admitted to FL DOC custody)
and 1,640 youthful offenders; the youngest was 14 years old and serving a
sentence for robbery with a gun or deadly weapon.[323]
There is no prohibition in state law or FL DOC policies or regulations against
holding young people in solitary confinement in Florida prisons.

FL DOC officials reported that both youthful offenders and
non-youthful offenders can be placed in confinement, including for disciplinary
and other management purposes.[324]
Inmates in FL DOC custody who are held in disciplinary confinement (DC) or
administrative confinement (AC) are entitled out of their cell three times per
week to take a shower and—but only after thirty days—an
additional three hours per week to exercise.[325]
Inmates in “Close Management, Level I” status (CM-1) are entitled
out of their cell three times per week to take a shower and an additional six
hours per week to exercise.[326]
Conditions in AC, DC, and CM-1 constitute solitary confinement. FL DOC
officials confirmed that there are no differences
between the disciplinary rules for managing the behavior of young people under
age 18 and those for managing the behavior of adults over age 18; that there
are no age-specific limits on the use of close management, AC, or DC for young
people under age 18; and that there are no restrictions on housing young people
alone in AC, DC, or close management in DOC facilities.[327]

Research Findings

Florida Jails

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with four young people who reported being held in
protective solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Florida jails.
All of these young people reported spending three or more months in protective
solitary confinement while under age 18. Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union interviewed 21 young people who reported being held in
punitive solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Florida jails.
Seven of those young people said they spent more than one period in punitive
solitary confinement of 15 days at a time or longer. Fourteen young people
reported being held in administrative solitary confinement, generally when
accused of committing a disciplinary infraction, while in pre-trial detention
in Florida jails. Five young people reported spending one or more period in
medical solitary confinement, three of them after they attempted or spoke about
having considered attempting suicide.

Young people held in solitary confinement in Florida jails
generally described being allowed out of their cell one hour each day, or for
two hours, two or three times per week. Generally, young people were permitted
to shower regularly and sometimes make phone calls to loved ones. Ten young
people described spending a period of time in solitary confinement during which
they were only allowed out of their cell for showers; seven reported being
unable to call or visit with loved ones. Seven young people said they spent a
period in solitary confinement during which they were unable to access any
reading or writing materials in their cell. Four young people said they had
attempted suicide while in solitary confinement.

Florida Prisons

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with six young people who reported being held in
administrative solitary confinement while under age 18 in state prison in
Florida. Three of those young people reported having spent three months or
longer in administrative solitary confinement (in either CM-1 and AC status)
while under age 18. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed six young people who told us they were held in punitive solitary
confinement while in Florida prisons. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union also interviewed seven young people who told us they spent time
in DC with a cell-mate.[328]

Young people in solitary confinement in Florida prisons
reported spending prolonged periods (sometimes longer than 30 days) without any
out-of-cell exercise. Those who did get out-of-cell exercise described being
able to exercise alone in a small fenced-in area.

Young people reported being able to shower regularly, but
not every day. Some young people under age 18 with intellectual disabilities
reported receiving in-cell study packets; other young people under age 18
reported receiving no educational programming while in solitary confinement.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
have found that some Michigan jails and prisons use solitary confinement to
detain and manage young people under age 18 in a range of circumstances. Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union corresponded with or
interviewed 15 individuals who reported being subjected to one or more periods
of solitary confinement while under age 18 in jails in Berrien, Calhoun,
Ingham, Kent, Oakland, Wayne, and Saginaw counties; and in a number of state
prisons. Though not investigated by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union, officials in Alcona, Bay, Branch, Cass, Clinton, Genesee,
Jackson, Kalamazoo, Macomb, Roscommon, Washtenaw, and Wexford Counties have
reported detaining young people under age 18 in the last six years.[329]
Human Right Watch also interviewed or corresponded with state jail and prison
officials.

The Law and Policy Landscape

Michigan law and policy governing jails and prisons permit
holding young people in various forms of prolonged isolation or segregation
that can constitute solitary confinement.[330]

Michigan Jails

Most Michigan young people under age 18 who are charged as
if adults are treated this way because criminal majority begins at 17 (although
younger young people can also be charged as adults).[331]
Young people under age 17 may be detained in adult jails with the
permission of the county sheriff (this includes both young people charged as if
adults and, for up to 30 days, certain juvenile delinquents who violate
probation).[332] The
state requires that young people under age 17 held in adult jails be held
physically separate from 17 year olds and adults.[333]
But there is no prohibition in state law against holding young people in
solitary confinement in adult jails.[334]

Jail officials in Bay, Benzie, Cass, Cheboygan, Gladwin,
Houghton, Lapeer, and Oakland counties reported that young people under age 18
are subject to the same disciplinary rules as adults when confined in their
facilities.[335]
Officials in Cheboygan, Gladwin, Houghton, Muskegon, and St. Joseph counties
told Human Rights Watch that young people under age 18 can be sentenced to time
in segregation for disciplinary infractions, during which they are permitted
out of their cell for less than two hours each day.[336]
Officials in Oakland and Macomb counties reported that while young people age
17 are housed with adults, young people under age 17 are generally held in
medical cells to keep them separate from adults; officials in Oakland County
reported that such young people spend less than two hours per day outside of
their cell.[337] Such
conditions constitute solitary confinement.

Michigan Prisons

The Michigan Department of Corrections (MI DOC) holds young
people who are convicted of criminal offenses and sentenced while under age 18.
Young people and adults between age 17 and 20 can be sentenced as
“youthful trainees,” except those who commit certain, generally
serious, offenses.[338] By
policy, young people under age 17 and youthful trainees are held in specialized
facilities (either at the Thumb Correctional Facility or the Women’s
Huron Valley Correctional Facility).[339] Young
people under age 17 are, to the extent practicable, kept sight and sound
separated from 17 year olds and adults.[340]
However, the department can designate any young person under age 18 for housing
and placement at a mainline prison (including if the person is deemed to pose a
risk to others, or if requires psychiatric care).[341]
There is no prohibition in state law or MI DOC policies or regulations against
holding young people in solitary confinement in Michigan prisons.

MI DOC officials declined to comment on MI DOC disciplinary
policies with regard to young people under age 18, though the officials did
indicate that the MI DOC classification system does not consider age as a
factor in inmate classification.[342]
Inmates in MI DOC custody who are held in temporary, punitive, or
administrative segregation are entitled out of their cell three times per week
to take a shower and shave and a minimum of one hour per day, five days per
week, to exercise.[343] Such
conditions constitute solitary confinement.

Research Findings

Michigan Jails

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with seven young people who reported being held in
protective solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Michigan jails.
Five young people said they had spent two months or longer in protective
solitary confinement while under age 18. Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union interviewed or corresponded with six young people who
reported being held in punitive solitary confinement while in pre-trial
detention in Michigan jails. Three of those young people said they spent ten days
or more in punitive solitary confinement while under age 18. One young person
reported being held in administrative solitary confinement for approximately
one month while under age 18.

Young people held in solitary confinement in Michigan jails
generally described being allowed out of their cell one hour each day, or for
one-and-a-half or two hours a few times each week, in a day room or common
space, generally alone, during which they could shower and sometimes make phone
calls to loved ones. Young people generally reported being able to receive
visits from loved ones, but four young people told us they were unable to have
contact visits. Young people generally said they were able to access reading
materials. One young person said he or she was only able to receive reading
materials sent by others directly from the publisher. Two young people said
they received a Christian bible and no other reading materials while in
solitary confinement. Three young people reported receiving no educational
materials or programming while in solitary confinement. Two young people said
they had considered suicide while in solitary confinement.

Michigan Prisons

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with eight young people who reported being held in
solitary confinement while in state prison in Michigan. Human Rights Watch and
the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed five young people who told us
they were held in punitive solitary confinement while in Michigan prisons. Three
of those young people reported spending more than one period in punitive
solitary confinement of one month or longer.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
have found that some New York jails and prisons use solitary confinement to
detain and manage young people under age 18 in a range of circumstances. Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed seven
individuals who reported being subjected to one or more periods of solitary
confinement while under age 18 in jails at Rikers Island. Though not
investigated by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,
officials in Albany, Erie, Madison, Monroe, Nassau, Niagara, Onandaga, Orange,
Orleans, Seneca, Steuben, Suffolk, Sullivan, Washington, and Westchester
Counties have reported detaining young people under age 18 in the last six
years.[344] Human
Rights Watch also interviewed or corresponded with state jail and prison
officials.

The Law and Policy Landscape

New York law and policy governing jails and prisons permit
holding young people in various forms of prolonged isolation or segregation
that can constitute solitary confinement.[345]

New York Jails

Most New York young people under age 18 who are charged as
if adults are treated this way because criminal majority begins at 16 (although
younger adolescents can also be charged as adults).[346]
Young people under age 18 who are charged as if adults can be held in adult
jails.[347] The
state requires that adolescents under age 19 held in adult jails be held
physically separate from adults age 19 and older.[348]
But there is no prohibition in state law against holding young people in
solitary confinement in adult jails.[349]

Between 45,000 and 50,000 young people under age 18 are
arrested each year in New York and prosecuted as if adults.[350]
A significant proportion of those young people are held in adult jails: in
2010, 16 jails reported to the US Department of Justice that on a single day in
June, they held 942 young people; New York City alone held 786 adolescents in fiscal
year 2012.[351] Jail
officials in Erie, Fulton, Lewis, Monroe, Orange, and Rensselaer counties and
in New York City reported that adolescents are subject to the same disciplinary
rules as adults when confined in their facilities.[352]
Officials in Orange county and New York City told Human Rights Watch that young
people under age 18 can be sentenced to time in segregation for disciplinary
infractions, during which they are permitted out of their cell for less than
two hours each day.[353] Such
conditions constitute solitary confinement.

New York Prisons

The New York Department of Corrections and Community
Supervision (NY DOCCS) holds young people who are convicted of criminal
offenses and sentenced while under age 18. Young people under age 18 and adults
under age 21 in DOCCS custody are detained in specialized facilities.[354]
On January 1, 2012, the NY DOCCS held 181 young people under age 18; 11 of them
were 16 years old.[355] There
is no prohibition in state law or NY DOCCS policies or regulations against holding
young people in solitary confinement in New York prisons. Young people under
age 18 in NY DOCCS facilities are subjected to the same disciplinary rules as
adults.[356]

Young people under age 18 in NY DOCCS custody can be held in
Special Housing Units (SHUs), a form of segregated isolation, for disciplinary
or administrative purposes; however, between a third and half of all people
held in SHUs are held two per cell (or “double-celled”).[357]
Officials confirmed that in certain circumstances, young people under age 18
are held in conditions that constitute solitary confinement.[358]
On January 1, 2012, the NY DOCCS held 83 young people between age 16 and 18 in
SHUs.[359]

Research Findings

New York Jails

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed seven young people who reported being held in solitary confinement
while in pre-trial detention in jail in New York City. A number of those
adolescents reported spending significant periods in punitive solitary
confinement. Five young people said they had spent a total of longer than
thirty days in solitary confinement while under age eighteen; two of those
adolescents said they had spent longer than six months in solitary confinement.

New York City jail officials reported to Human Rights Watch
that 14.4 percent of adolescents between age 16 and 18 at Rikers Island spend
at least one period of time in punitive segregation.[360]
Officials also reported that in FY2012, 48 percent of all adolescents had been
identified as having a mental disability (or “a diagnosed mental
disorder,” as defined in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).[361]
Officials confirmed that young people in punitive segregation spend less than
two hours per day outside of their cell; thus, the practice constitutes
solitary confinement.[362]

Officials also provided data that shows that adolescents are
held in solitary confinement as the result of a range of disciplinary
infractions.[363]

Table 1: Infractions leading to a term of punitive segregation in New
York City

Disciplinary Infraction

Percent of Punitive Segregation Terms
Involving Each Infraction

Fighting resulting in injury

19%

Assault on inmate

18%

Assault on staff

14%

Fighting

11%

Contraband-weapon

7%

Physically resisting staff members

6%

Assault with a weapon

3%

Destruction of city property

3%

Making threats to staff

3%

Assault—spitting/throwing

2%

Other

14%

Officials provided data that suggests that adolescents are
subjected to longer periods of time in solitary confinement than adults; and
generally spend longer than a month in solitary confinement, with some
adolescents spending significantly longer periods in solitary.[364]

Table 2: Time spent in punitive segregation in New York City

Finally, officials provided data that suggests that
adolescents subjected to solitary confinement are broadly representative of the
general population of adolescents in terms of the offense with which they are
charged.[365]

Table 3: Charges of adolescents in segregation in New York City compared to
general population

Young people held in solitary confinement in New York City
jails described being allowed out of their cell for one hour each day in a
caged recreation area, but two young people told us that they were only allowed
exercise if they woke up before breakfast and requested it. They also reported
being let out of their cell for a short shower once per day. Young people
reported being able to receive regular visits from loved ones. Three young
people said they were able to access reading and writing materials while in
solitary confinement, but that the only educational programming they were
permitted were in-cell study packets. One young person said he or she had
attempted suicide while in solitary confinement.

Avenues for Reform

In spite of these challenges, the legal and policy landscape
in New York is shifting in a positive direction. New York lawmakers have
introduced legislation that would raise the age of criminal majority to 18.[366]
New York City recently announced a new program that may deliver additional
services to young people held in solitary confinement; and a new disciplinary
approach to minor infractions, involving short-term disciplinary room
confinement.[367] Jail
officials in Erie County and New York City have acknowledged that young people
are different, and have signaled openness to additional reform. Captain
Hartman, of Erie County, told us,

[I] [c]an tell you with absolute certainty that there is a
point with everybody, but with these minors that point is much sooner, when
solitary confinement goes from being an effective management tool and goes to
being counterproductive. And when it goes to being counterproductive, it gets
very rapidly, rapidly worse.… Teenagers live for now and today and
don’t take consequences into account. Whether it’s hormonal,
emotional—regardless of the reason—fact is fact. [There] [n]eeds to
be [an] environment that understands that and takes that into account—and
channels all that stuff so it’s not coming out violently.… Inmates
who are successful in managing [their] own behavior in jail should be rewarded
and provided incentives for continuing. There should be tangible consequences
for not doing that, but something to look forward to if they do, but [by] using
different amounts of privilege, living conditions, all that sort of stuff.[368]

Commissioner Schriro of the New
York City Department of Corrections told us,
If you can get in quick enough, [the ideal] would be the
equivalent of ‘go to your room.’ A lot of these [conflicts] start
small. If you have one youth who is monopolizing the channel-changer [for the
housing area television], the option now [] if he does not respond is to
infract him [which results in punitive segregation]. What I prefer is ‘go
to your room young man’ and then to create a mechanism for
review—so every two hours you double back and it wouldn’t go any
longer than six hours—so that it doesn’t go beyond a de facto punitive
segregation in your housing unit. So when you are ready to come out, all is
forgiven.[369]

To continue down the road to
reform, New York must ensure that young people under age 18 are never subjected
to solitary confinement in jails or in prisons.[370]

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
have found that some Pennsylvania jails (also called county prisons) and
prisons use solitary confinement to detain and manage young people under age 18
in a range of circumstances.[371] Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed or corresponded
with 11 individuals who reported being subjected to one or more periods of
solitary confinement while under 18 in jails in Alleghany, Dauphin, Lackawanna,
Lebanon, Lehigh, and Philadelphia Counties; and in state prison. Though not
investigated by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,
officials in Beaver, Blair, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Crawford,
Cumberland, Delaware, Erie, Fayette, Franklin, Juniata, Lancaster, Luzerne,
Monroe, Montgomery, Northampton, Schuylkill, Union, Westmoreland and York,
Counties have reported detaining young people under age 18 in the last six
years.[372] Human
Rights Watch also interviewed or corresponded with state jail and prison
officials.

The Law and Policy Landscape

Pennsylvania law and policy governing jails and prisons
permit holding young people in various forms of prolonged isolation or
segregation that can constitute solitary confinement.[373]

Pennsylvania Jails (also called county prisons)

By statute, young people under age 18 charged as if adults may
be held in jails.[374] Under
a legislative reform passed in 2010, young people charged as if adults can be
“transferred” back into the juvenile justice system.[375]
But even young people awaiting transfer may be held in adult jails. The state
requires that young people under age 18 held in adult jails be separated by
sight and sound from adults.[376] But
there is no prohibition in state law against holding young people in solitary
confinement in adult jails.[377]

Pennsylvania jails reported—in a daily
snapshot—holding 215 young people under age 18 in 66 jails on January 31,
2012.[378] Jail
officials in Carbon, Chester, Clinton, and Mifflin counties reported that
adolescents are subject to the same disciplinary rules as adults when confined
in their facilities.[379]
Officials in Clinton and Chester Counties told Human Rights Watch that young
people under age 18 can be sentenced to time in segregation for disciplinary
infractions, during which they are permitted out of their cell for less than
two hours each day.[380] Such
conditions constitute solitary confinement.

Pennsylvania Prisons

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) holds
young people who are convicted of criminal offenses and sentenced while under
age 18. Young people and adults under age nineteen-and-a-half are housed at
Secure Correctional Institution Pine Grove (SCI Pine Grove) when entering
department custody and participate in the Young Adult Offender Program through
age 21.[381] As of
July 31, 2012, there were 899 inmates under age 22 at SCI Pine Grove.[382]
There is no prohibition in state law or PA DOC policies or regulations against
holding young people in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prisons.

PA DOC officials reported that, while they seek to avoid
placing young people in punitive or administrative solitary confinement, young
people are housed in this way.[383]
Officials reported that the inmates at SCI Pine Grove are held in
administrative or disciplinary confinement at high rates: “It has
historically been about 10 percent of the population; about 4-5 percent are
those we can’t incorporate back into the population.… So that
drives our average in the [Restrictive Housing Unit] 4-5 percent higher than
[other prisons].”[384] On April
30, 2012, 10.9 percent of inmates under 22 at SCI Pine Grove were held in
either administrative or disciplinary confinement.[385]
However, officials report that they try to exercise their authority—when
possible—to reduce the length of time young people spend in disciplinary
confinement. Eric Bush, the superintendent at SCI Pine Grove, told us,

The facility manager can reduce the time. And we use that
tool. If we have an opportunity to reduce their DC [Disciplinary Confinement]
status we try to do that. Unfortunately, some of them get into gang issues and
they can’t be put back into population. There [are] also mandatory issues
that we can’t reduce [under the Inmate Discipline Policy]—like
assaulting a staff member.[386]

Research Findings

Pennsylvania Jails (also called county prisons)

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
interviewed or corresponded with six young people who reported being held in
protective solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Pennsylvania
jails. Five of those young people reported spending more than a month in
protective solitary confinement. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union interviewed five young people who reported being held in
punitive solitary confinement while in pre-trial detention in Pennsylvania
jails. Three of those young people said they spent more than one period in
punitive solitary confinement of 15 days or more. Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union interviewed three young people who reported spending
two or more days in medical solitary confinement to quarantine them when they
first entered jail.

Young people held in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania
jails generally described being allowed out of their cell one or two hours each
day into a day room or common space, generally alone, during which they could
shower and sometimes make phone calls to loved ones. Young people reported
being able to receive visits from loved ones, but one young person told us he
or she was unable to have contact visits. Three young people said they were
unable to access any reading materials and one young person reported being
unable to access writing materials in his or her cell while in solitary
confinement. One young person said he or she had considered suicide while in
solitary confinement.

Pennsylvania Prisons

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
corresponded with two young people who reported being held in punitive solitary
confinement while in state prison in Pennsylvania. One of those young people
reported having spent eight-and-a-half months in punitive solitary confinement
while under age 18.

Pennsylvania prison regulations mandate that young people in
punitive or administrative solitary confinement receive only one hour of
recreation each day, five days a week.[387]
Officials confirmed that young people receive an in-cell study packet, meet
weekly with a counselor, and with a psychological expert
“regularly,” but, “other than that they are pretty much in
their cell.”[388]

Avenues for Reform

The legal and policy landscape in Pennsylvania is shifting, and
must move further if it is to adequately protect young people. The 2010 reform
that permits young people charged as if adults to be transferred to the
juvenile justice system is a promising change.[389]
But the state must change its approach to detaining and managing young people.
Fortunately, officials within the PA DOC acknowledge that young people are
different, and that solitary confinement is not an effective way to manage
young people. Eric Bush put it this way:

I most definitely think there is a heightened risk for
young adults. They are so impulsive and sometimes they “act out”
out of anger rather than an intention to hurt themselves—or
attention-seeking behaviors.… [Prolonged isolation] is detrimental to the
youth. Unfortunately, we have people confined.… [O]ver the years we have
learned that they don’t get anything out of that. They really
don’t. My personal opinion is that it is a detriment to them to keep them
in restrictive housing for any length of time. Unfortunately, those
[Departmental rules] are the policies that guide us.… There is not enough
to be gained on an individual basis for them to prepare themselves for release
in restrictive housing.[390]

To continue down the road to reform,
Pennsylvania must ensure that young people under age 18 are never subjected to
solitary confinement in jails or in prisons.[391]

[1]
In the United States, and throughout the report, the term ”jail”
refers to a facility that generally holds individuals awaiting trial in the
criminal justice system or sentenced to less than a year of incarceration;
“prison” refers to a facility that generally holds individuals
sentenced to one or more years of incarceration. This report uses various
terms, including “youth,” “teenagers,”
“children,” “young people,” and
“adolescents,” interchangeably to refer to youth under the age of
18. Throughout the report, the term “solitary confinement” is used
to describe physical and social isolation for 22 to 24 hours per day and for
one or more days, regardless of the purpose for which it is imposed. While
solitary confinement is apparently used in juvenile facilities on occasion,
this report focuses only on its use in adult jails and prisons.

[5]
Even when youth crime rates were at their highest, in the early 1990s, judicial
waiver never exceeded 2 percent of all delinquency cases. United States General
Accounting Office, “Juvenile Justice: Juveniles Processed in Criminal
Court and Case Dispositions,” August 1995, http://www.gao.gov/assets/230/221507.pdf

[6]
Many commentators warned against the rise of the so-called
“‘super-predator” youth. John DiIulio, How to Stop the
Coming Crime Wave (New York: Manhattan Institute, 1996), p. 1. The analysis
of data on crime rates is complicated. See, for example, James P. Lynch, Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice,
“Trends in Juvenile Violent Offending: An Analysis of Victim Survey
Data,” October 2002, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/191052.pdf
(accessed June 7, 2012).

[7]
For more information about the variety of mechanisms to try youth, see Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice, 1999
National Report Series, “Challenging the Myths,” https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/178993.pdf.

[8]
“P.A. Legislature: House to Weigh Bill on Violence,” The
Vindicator, October 24, 1995. In the summer of 1993, for example, Colorado
legislators wrote, debated, and passed a broad overhaul of criminal laws in
just 10 days during an extraordinary session, and radically transformed the
state’s criminal justice system as it related to youth. This was dubbed
the “summer of violence.” “Young Guns: Growing Number of
States Get Tough,” Associated Press, October 21, 1993; “Summer of
Violence Leaves Denver Demanding Answers,” Associated Press, July 29,
1993. Wisconsin and New Hampshire lowered the upper age of juvenile court
jurisdiction, deeming adulthood to begin at 17, not 18, for purposes of
criminal prosecution. Patricia Torbet et al., Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice, “Juveniles Facing
Criminal Sanctions: Three States that Changed the Rules,” April 2000, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/181203.pdf
(accessed June 7, 2012), pp. xi-xii. By 1997, all states but three (Nebraska,
New York, and Vermont) had changed their laws to make it easier and more likely
that child offenders would stand trial and be sentenced in adult criminal
courts. Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice, “Juvenile Offenders and
Victims: 1999 National Report,” September 1999, http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/nationalreport99/toc.htmlp. 15.

[9]
Patrick Griffin et al., Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,
US Department of Justice, “Trying Juveniles As Adults: An Analysis of
State Transfer Laws and Reporting,” September 2011, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/232434.pdf
(accessed June 7, 2012). Offense-based exclusion laws subject youth to the
original jurisdiction of the adult criminal justice system on the basis of the
charged offense (sometimes but not always with an additional age minimum). For
example, Pennsylvania charges all homicide cases in adult criminal court,
regardless of the age of the offender. Prosecutorial direct-file laws usually
give charging officials the (sometimes unlimited) discretion to decide whether
to file charges in juvenile court or in adult court (sometimes with age
restrictions). Colorado recently raised the age minimum for direct-file
eligible offenses (such as homicide) from 14 to 16, but other states, such as
Florida, have no minimum age for a broad range of offenses. Finally, in some
states, like Florida, once a youth has been convicted of an offense in adult
criminal court, all subsequent offenses (even minor ones) are treated as if
committed by an adult; for many offenses over which the juvenile court retains
original jurisdiction, states have reduced the discretion of judges to prevent
the case from being transferred to adult court.

[10]
Pennsylvania just created an avenue to transfer youth back to the juvenile
justice system; Michigan allows “blended” sentencing of youth.

[12]
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, The Rest of Their Lives,
p.5.

[13]
Alex R. Piquero, “Disproportionate Minority Contact,” The Future
of Children, vol. 18, no.2 (2008), p. 66, citing National Council on Crime
and Delinquency, And Justice for Some: Differential Treatment of Youth of
Color in the Justice System (Oakland: National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, 2007); Neelum Arya and Ian Augarten, Campaign for Youth Justice,
“Critical Condition: African-American Youth in the Justice System,”
September 2008, http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/CFYJPB_CriticalCondition.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[14]
Piquero, “Disproportionate Minority Contact,” The Future of
Children, p. 62, citing National Council on Crime and Delinquency, And
Justice for Some: Differential Treatment of Youth of Color in the Justice
System.

[17]
As Human Rights Watch has documented elsewhere, some youth convicted of felony
murder serving life without parole played a minor role in the crime. Indeed, in
some jurisdictions, as many as half of youth offenders serving life without
parole were convicted without having physically committed the underlying
offense. See Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, The Rest of Their
Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States,
October 12, 2005, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/10/11/rest-their-lives-0, pp.
27-28.

[18]
A total list of crimes of conviction for these five youth (some of whom
were convicted of a combination of these offenses) include burglary, grand
theft, property damage/criminal mischief, attempted armed burglary, drug
possession, and possession of a concealed weapon.

[24]
National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health,
“Teenage Brain: A Work in Progress,” 2001,
http://wwwapps.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/teenage-brain-a-work-in-progress.shtml
(accessed November 25, 2007).

[31]
Wis. Stat. Ann. § 938.18(8) (“When waiver is granted, the juvenile,
if held in secure custody, shall be transferred to an appropriate officer or
adult facility”); 938.183(1m) (providing for the detention in adult
facilities of youth subject to original criminal jurisdiction); 938.209(3). But
see Wis. Stat. Ann. § 938.183(1m) (“If the juvenile is under 15
years of age, the juvenile may be held in secure custody only in a juvenile
detention facility or in the juvenile section of a county jail.”).

[37]
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Elissa Rumsey, June 28, 2012;
Definitions, US Code, 42 USC 5602 (26) (“the term ‘adult
inmate’ means an individual who (A) has reached the age of full criminal
responsibility under applicable State law; and (B) has been arrested and is in
custody for or awaiting trial on a criminal charge, or is convicted of a
criminal charge offense”).

[38]
As noted above, in most states those sentenced to less than one year of
incarceration often serve out their sentences in jails.

[42]
In 2005, for example, youth under the age of 18 made up less than 1 percent of
all inmates in US jails, yet comprised 21 percent of all victims of
substantiated incidents of sexual abuse involving inmates. National Prison Rape
Elimination Commission, “National Prison Rape Elimination Commission
Report,” June 2009, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/226680.pdf (accessed
August 27, 2012), p. 42, citing Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice, Juvenile
offenders and victims: 2006 National report (Washington, D.C.: US
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 2006) and Allen J. Beck and
Paige M. Harrison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice,
“Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09,”
August 2010, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri0809.pdf (accessed
August 27, 2012). Youth under 20 experience the highest rates of sexual abuse
by staff of any prison age demographic, and the highest rates of sexual abuse
by other inmates of any jail age demographic. Beck and Harrison, “Sexual
Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-2009”; In
contrast, approximately 2.6 percent of youth in juvenile facilities reported a
sexual incident involving another youth, while 10.3 percent reported an
incident involving facility staff. Allen J. Beck, Paige M. Harrison and Paul
Guerino, Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice, “Sexual
Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2008-2009,”
January 2010, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry09.pdf (accessed
August 27, 2012), p. 1 (analyzing statistics gathered by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics).

[43]
Jeffrey Fagan, Martin Forst, and T. Scott Vivona, “Youth in Prisons and
Training Schools: Perceptions and Consequences of the Treatment-Custody
Dichotomy,” Juvenile and Family Court, vol. 40 (1989), p. 9. See
also Jason Ziedenberg and

[45]
Robert Hahn et al., Centers for Disease Control, “Effects on Violence of
Laws and Policies Facilitating the Transfer of Youth from the Juvenile to the
Adult Justice System: A Report on Recommendations of the Task Force on
Community Preventive Services,” vol. 56, no. RR-9, November 30, 2007,
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5609a1.htm (accessed August 27,
2012).

[46]
UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture
and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez,
U.N. G.A. Doc. A/66/268, August 5, 2011,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012). Jail and prison officials do not generally use the
term “solitary confinement” to refer to the range of segregation
and isolation practices they employ to manage inmates. They are correct in
noting that conditions are not exactly like those used in the earliest
facilities to employ the practice. But because the conditions and effects of
various segregation practices are substantially the same, Human Rights Watch
and the American Civil Liberties Union use a single definition based on the
degree of deprivation. At the same time, this report’s focus on solitary
confinement should not be read to endorse segregation and isolation practices
that do not fit this definition. Any use of physical and social isolation,
including if it is for a shorter duration, can raise serious human rights
concerns. The same is true for the practice of holding two inmates in
conditions that would otherwise constitute solitary confinement (Human Rights
Watch and mental health professionals have raised serious concerns about this
practice). Similarly, this report’s focus on youth under age 18 should
not be read to minimize the developmental differences between, for example, an
18 or a 24 year old and a 40 year old, and the corresponding vulnerability to
solitary confinement.

[47]
Solitary confinement in general has a long history, and Human Rights Watch has
done extensive research on the isolated—and solitary—confinement of
adults. See, for example: Written Statement from Human Rights Watch to the
Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil
Rights, and Human Rights, “US: Look Critically at Widespread
Use of Solitary Confinement,” June 2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/18/us-look-critically-widespread-use-solitary-confinement.
The earliest form of solitary confinement involved complete isolation,
including hooding prisoners, so that during their incarceration inmates never
saw (and rarely heard) another human being. Stuart Grassian, “Psychiatric
Effects of Solitary Confinement,” Journal of Law and Policy, vol.
22 (2006), p. 340. Such complete isolation fell out of favor as a jail or
prison management technique for many decades, but a range of similar practices
are now used worldwide. Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and
other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez, August
5, 2011.

[51]
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative suggests that best practices for
juvenile facilities include prohibiting room confinement as a response to current
acting out behavior in excess of four hours and prohibiting disciplinary room
confinement in excess of 72 hours. “Juvenile Detention Alternatives
Initiative (JDAI) Facility Site Assessment Instrument,” May 2006, http://www.cclp.org/documents/Conditions/JDAI%20Standards.pdf. The American Bar Association Task
Force on Youth in the Adult Criminal Justice System proposed that room
confinement for any purpose should never exceed ten days. American Bar
Association (ABA), Youth in the Criminal Justice System: Guidelines for
Policy Makers and Practitioners (American Bar Association, 2001), http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/natlres/ABA%20-%20Youth%20in%20the%20Criminal%20Justice%20System%20Guidelines%20for%20Policymakers.pdf. The 1980 American Bar
Association Guidelines for Juvenile Facilities suggests that best practices for
juvenile facilities should include limiting room confinement for suicide risk
or protective custody to eight hours; and limiting disciplinary confinement to
five days for minor infractions and ten days for major infractions.

[54]
Mental health problems refers to a broad spectrum of mental, behavioral, or
emotional symptoms described by youth, including both youth with and without
identified mental disabilities, as well as experiences and symptoms that may be
due to psychological immaturity.

[56]
The results of and debate regarding a one-year longitudinal study in Colorado
suggest the complexities inherent in measuring and understanding the
psychological effects of solitary confinement. Maureen L. O’Keefe et al.,
Colorado Department of Corrections, “One Year Longitudinal Study of the
Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation,” October 31, 2010,
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/232973.pdf (accessed August 27,
2012); Peter Scharff Smith, National Institute of Corrections, “The
effects of solitary confinement: Commentary on One Year Longitudinal Study of
the Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation,” June 2011, www.community.nicic.gov/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/_key/CommunityServer.CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.05.95.22/Supermax-_2D00_-T-_2S00_-Smith.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012). In addition to increased mental health problems
generally, suicide rates and incidents of self-harm are much higher for
prisoners in solitary confinement. In California, for example, although less
than 10 percent of the state’s prison population was held in isolation units
in 2004, those units accounted for 73 percent of all suicides. Expert Report of
Professor Craig Haney at 45-46, n. 119, Coleman v. Schwarzenegger/ Plata v.
Schwarzenegger, Eastern Federal District Court of California/Northern
Federal District Court of California, 2008 (Civ S 90-0520 LKK-JFM P, C01-1351
THE (E.D. Cal/N.D. Cal. 2008)).

[57]
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with Louis Kraus, Chief of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, Rush University Medical Center, and Co-Chair of the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Committee on Juvenile
Justice Reform, June 14, 2012; with Richard Barnum, forensic child
psychiatrist, May 30, 2012; and with Deborah DePrato, Director, Institute for
Public Health and Justice, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center,
and Associate Clinical Professor, School of Public Health, June 6, 2012.

[76]
Summer J. Robins, Candice L. Odgers, and Michael A. Russell,
“Incarcerated Girls’ Physical Health: Can the Juvenile Justice
System Help to Reduce Long-Term Health Costs,” Court Review, vol.
46 (2009), http://aja.ncsc.dni.us/publications/courtrv/cr46-1and2/CR46-1-2Robins.pdf; Bruce Jacobs, New Mexico State
University, “Adolescents and Self-Cutting (Self-Harm): Information for
Parents, Guide I-104,” June 2005, aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_i/i-104.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012). Researchers in the United Kingdom found that while
women make up approximately 5 percent of the prison population in the UK, they
account for 52 percent of reported incidents of self-harm. SP Inquiry,
“An independent public inquiry into the treatment of young women in
custody,” http://www.howardleague.org/self-injury/ (accessed August 27,
2012).

[83]Media reports discuss at least six suicides of
youth under 18 in solitary confinement in adult jails or prisons in recent
years, including James Stewart (Colorado): Hector
Gutierrez, “Family sues city for $5 million in teen's jail death:
They say their son fought depression after fatal crash,” Rocky
Mountain News, November 25, 2008,

[85]
As used in this report, mental disabilities include diagnosable mental,
behavioral, or emotional conditions that substantially interfere with or limit
one or more major life activities; some refer to mental disabilities as
“mental illnesses.” Persons with mental disabilities also refer to
themselves as having psychosocial disabilities, a term that reflects the
interaction between psychological differences and the social/cultural limits
for behavior as well as the stigma that society attaches to persons with mental
impairments. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines
a mental disorder as a “clinically significant behavioral or
psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual” which is
a “manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological
dysfunction in the individual.” American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition
(Arlington, Virginia: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), p. xxxi. The
current revised edition of the DSM-IV, known as the DSM-IV-TR, organizes
psychiatric diagnoses into five levels (axes) that include serious clinical
disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (Axis 1), serious personality
disorders such as paranoia (Axis 2), and traumatic brain injuries (Axis 3).

[87]
That is, a diagnosis of a mental health condition defined by the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association.
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman Stein, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27, 2012; Human
Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[90]
For example, one study found that the mean age for the onset of the mental
health problems associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia was 19 years old.
Nitin Gogtay et al., “Age of Onset of Schizophrenia: Perspectives from
Neuroimaging Studies,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, vol. 37 (2011), http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/37/3/504.short
(accessed September 26, 2012), p. 504.

[119]Some researchers
have identified a link between a range of factors and interruptions of hormonal
homeostasis in various contexts. Katarzyna Bisaga et al., “Menstrual
Functioning and Psychopathology in a Country-Wide Population of High School
Girls,” Journal of the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
vol. 41, no. 10 (October 2002).

[125]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Daryl Tyus, Operations Lieutenant,
Jackson County Correctional Facility, Florida, April 3, 2012 (“They do
not attend [school]—they lose that”). For youth in some facilities,
this is true whether or not youth are in solitary confinement.

[132]
Intellectual disabilities, as used in the report, are permanent developmental
limitations. The American Association on Intellectual and Development
Disabilities defines intellectual disabilities as “characterized by
significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive
behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills. This
disability originates before the age of 18.” Intellectual functioning
refers to the ability to learn, reason, and problem-solve. American Association
on Intellectual and Development Disabilities, “FAQ on Intellectual
Disability,” http://www.aaidd.org/content_100.cfm?navID=21
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[133]
An individual education plan is a tailored plan for meeting educational goals
and requirements, developed by educators with input from individuals and their
families.

[135]
Office for Civil Rights, US Department of Education, “Free Appropriate
Public Education for Students With Disabilities: Requirements Under Section 503
of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,” August 2010,
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/edlite-FAPE504.html (accessed
August 27, 2012).

[143]
See Appendix 2; Colorado Department of Corrections, Code of Penal Discipline,
IV(B) http://www.doc.state.co.us/sites/default/files/ar/0150_01_09012011.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012) (“All offenders in the custody of the
executive director of the DOC should be subject to this code. All violations of
this code should be punishable as disciplinary violations.”).

[144]
For example, one official stated, “[Isolation] [c]ould be up to 30 days.
Depends on what they did. If they have many disciplinary reports in that 30 day
span, then it could be extended.” Human Rights Watch telephone interview
with Daryl Tyus, Operations Lieutenant, Jackson County Correctional Facility,
Florida, April 3, 2012.

[145]
We used a range of terminology in corresponding with jail and prison officials
to ensure that we obtained information about all practices involving
significant levels of isolation. Of the 80 jail officials who responded to
Human Rights Watch correspondence on detaining and managing youth, 34 responded
to a question about whether youth can be held in separation, segregation, or
special management cells; 30 of them indicated that youth could be held in such
cells (four said they could not). Officials in this limited sample reported
holding 44 youth in separation, segregation, or special management cells in the
past year. Human Rights Watch cannot confirm the precise conditions of
confinement for these youth, or whether the youth were held in solitary
confinement. Letter from Liz O’Neal, Special Management Coordinator, El
Paso County Criminal Justice Center, Colorado, to Human Rights Watch, January
5, 2012 (reporting that one youth was punished in this way in 2011); Letter
from Sherry Stanford, Lieutenant, Lewis County Jail, New York, to Human Rights
Watch, January 7, 2012 (reporting that the discipline and management policies
are the same for youth and adults and that two youth were punished in this way
in 2011); Letter from David Hetman, Program/Support Lieutenant, Correction
Bureau, Rensselaer County Office of the Sheriff, New York, to Human Rights
Watch, April 19, 2012 (reporting that the discipline and management policies
are the same for youth and adults and that 12 youth were punished in this way
in 2011); Letter from Ken Kochevar, Director of Corrections, Cuyahoga County,
Ohio, to Human Rights Watch, January 4, 2012 (reporting that the discipline and
management policies are the same for youth and adults and that 28 youth were
punished in this way in 2011); and Letter from Louise Hackel, Sergeant, Clark
County Jail, Wisconsin, to Human Rights Watch, February 6, 2012 (reporting that
the discipline and management policies are the same for youth and adults and
that one youth was punished in this way in 2011).

[147]
Some youth, however, did not recall having been given any legal or
administrative process before being disciplined. On the other hand,
disciplinary solitary confinement is often preceded by a period of short-term
administrative solitary confinement. In some facilities, Human Rights Watch and
the American Civil Liberties Union found that such confinement is automatic,
but others require a consideration of risk to other inmates before an
individual can be placed in administrative solitary confinement pending a
hearing for a disciplinary infraction. In some facilities, time spent in
short-term administrative solitary confinement is “credited” when
assessing a disciplinary sanction; in other facilities, youth do not receive
credit for time spent in administrative confinement. One youth told Human
Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, “They gave me 10
days… [but] there is no credit for time served [and] you have to wait 5
days for your hearing.” Human Rights Watch interview with Mason P.
(pseudonym), Florida, April 2012.

[157]
Only a few of the 77 youth interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the American
Civil Liberties Union described attempting (unsuccessfully) to appeal their
disciplinary sentence, with one saying, “[The process] is
crazy—there’s no relief!” Human Rights Watch interview with
Jacob L. (pseudonym), New York, April 2012.

[159]
Human Rights Watch telephone Interview with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, July 6, 2012.

[160]
Attapol Kuanliang et al., “Juvenile Inmates in an Adult Prison System:
Rates of Disciplinary Misconduct and Violence,” Criminal Justice and
Behavior, vol. 35 (2008), http://www.sagepub.com/stohrstudy/articles/11/Kuanliang.pdf. The analysis found that rates of all violations
per 1,000 inmates were 2,558 for youth under 18; 1,895 for youth between age 18
and 20; and 937 for other adult inmates; rates of all assaultive rule
violations were 109 per 1,000 for youth under 18; 61 for youth between age 18
and 20; and 26 for other adult inmates.

[168]
Letter from Susan Anderson, Corporal, Pasco County Detention Center, Florida,
to Human Rights Watch, January 27, 2012 (reporting that on January 27, 2012,
the facility held 12 youth charged as adults in single, separation,
segregation, or special management cells; that youth spend less than one hour
per day out of their cells; and that youth generally spend three to six months
in the facility); Letter from Kent Rachel, Crawford County Justice Center,
Ohio, to Human Rights Watch, January 5, 2012 (reporting that the facility
rarely holds youth, but that when it does they are held in separation,
segregation, or special management cells; that youth spend one to two hours per
day out of their cells; and that youth generally spend one week or less in the
facility); and Letter from Jacqueline Motter, Deputy Warden, Clinton County
Correctional Facility, Pennsylvania, to Human Rights Watch, February 13, 2012
(reporting that the facility generally holds youth charged as adults in single
cells near adults; that youth spend between one and two hours per day out of
their cells; and that youth spend one to two weeks in the facility).

[171]
Youthful Inmates, Prison Rape Elimination Act National Standards, 28 CFR §
115.14(a) (“A youthful inmate shall not be placed in a housing unit in
which the youthful inmate will have sight, sound, or physical contact with any
adult inmate through the use of a shared dayroom or other common space, shower
area, or sleeping quarters.”).

[180]
National Institute of Corrections, US Department of Justice, “Internal
Prison Classification Systems: Case Studies and Their Development and
Implementation,” January 2002, http://static.nicic.gov/Library/017381.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[181]
For example, Tom Clements, the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of
Corrections, told Human Rights Watch that although the Department of
Corrections is in the process of validating a new classification instrument,
the final version will not take age into account as a factor in determining
classification. Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Tom Clements, June
18, 2012. (“Our classification system really doesn’t factor in age.
If there is a person who is 17, 18, 19 years old we apply the same
classification system to them. We have been doing some work for the last nine
months or so on our classification system. We are piloting a new classification
instrument.… Assuming we implement that fully, we will rely less on how
much time a person has left to serve and focus more on other attributes and
characteristics. But it still will not factor in age as a driving
factor.”).

[185]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Marshall Shirley, Deputy, Secure
Correctional Institution Pine Grove, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections,
Pennsylvania, June 21, 2012. Note that the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections houses youth as young as 12 and as old as 22 in the same facility.

[186]
Written Testimony of Commissioner Chris Epps, Mississippi Department of
Corrections, “Reassessing Solitary Confinement the Human Rights, Fiscal,
and Public Safety Consequences,” Hearing before the Senate Committee on
the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights,
June 19, 2012, http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/12-6-19EppsTestimony.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012), p. 2.

[191]
Human Rights Watch interviewed more than a dozen youth held in various
facilities that did not permit outdoor recreation.

[192]
Others have noted that the practice still occurs in many jails and prisons.
Jeffrey L. Metzner, “Introduction to: Resource Document on the Use of
Restraint and Seclusion in Correctional Mental Health Care,” Journal
of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, vol. 35 (December 2007),
http://www.jaapl.org/content/35/4/415.full
(accessed August 27, 2012), p. 415.

[196]
Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, Sentenced to
Stigma:Segregation of HIV-Positive Prisoners in Alabama and South
Carolina, April 14, 2010,
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/health0410webwcover.pdf.

[197]
SAMHSA defines seclusion as “the involuntary confinement of a patient
alone in an area in which the patient is prevented from leaving.”
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) Services and Safety Committee,
Administrator’s Office of Policy Planning and Innovation (OPPI) and
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, “Alternatives
to Seclusion and Restraint in Behavioral Health Care,” May 19, 2011, http://iacc.hhs.gov/events/2011/slides_larke_huang_051911.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012). Referencing CMS Hospital Conditions of
Participation: SAMHSA National Action Plan on Seclusion and Restraint,
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, “Seclusion and
Restraint: Statement of the Problem and SAMHSA’s Response,” May
2003, http://www.samhsa.gov/seclusion/sr_handout.aspx
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[198]
SAMHSA National Action Plan on Seclusion and Restraint, “Seclusion and
Restraint: Statement of the Problem and SAMHSA’s Response.”

[199]
IACC Services and Safety Committee, “Alternatives to Seclusion and
Restraint in Behavioral Health Care”; SAMHSA National Action Plan on
Seclusion and Restraint, “Seclusion and Restraint: Statement of the
Problem and SAMHSA’s Response.”

[200]
Indeed, there are also no systematic national data on how many adults in jails
and prisons or youth in juvenile facilities are subjected to solitary
confinement.

[203]
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman Stein, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27, 2012; Human
Rights Watch telephone interview with Marshall Shirley, Deputy, Secure
Correctional Institution Pine Grove, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections,
Pennsylvania, June 21, 2012. Note that the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections houses youth as young as 12 and as old as 22 in the same facility.
See Pennsylvania Department of Corrections monthly prison data (reporting 10.9
percent of all youth under age 22 at Pine Grove Secure Correctional Institution
in administrative or disciplinary solitary confinement as of April 2012),http://www.cor.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/research___statistics/10669/monthly_population_reports/1069959
(accessed September 26, 2012); Human Rights Watch telephone interview
with Eric Bush, Superintendent, Secure Correctional Institution Pine Grove,
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, June 21, 2012.

[204]
New York state law distinguishes between adolescents ages 16 to 18 and adults
for purposes of pre-trial and post-conviction detention; data was therefore
reported for all adolescents. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with
Sharman Stein, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections,
July 27, 2012; Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell,
Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[205]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, New York, July 6, 2012.

[209]
Prison officials in Colorado, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania all told
Human Rights Watch that youth and adults are bound by the same disciplinary
rules and that youth are held in punitive segregation. Jail officials in 26
counties in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin told Human Rights Watch that youth and adults are bound by the
same disciplinary rules.

[210]
Kuanliang et al., “Juvenile Inmates in an Adult Prison System: Rates of
Disciplinary Misconduct and Violence.” The analysis suggests
that—per year—youth under age 18 are found guilty of
“potentially violent rule violations” at a rate of 353.17 per 1,000
and of “assaultive rule violations” at a rate of 109.38 per 1,000.

[211]
Ibid. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have found that
youth subjected to disciplinary confinement in Florida are sometimes held two
per cell but at other times are held in solitary confinement.

[217]
No state prison system reported a difference in the formal regulations
governing disciplinary solitary confinement for youth and adults. A few jail
officials also explicitly stated that youth and adults are subjected to the
same periods of solitary confinement. Letter from Bernie Zook,
Administrator/Warden, Mifflin County Correctional Facility, Pennsylvania, to
Human Rights Watch, January 3, 2012; and Letter from Paul Falduto, Captain of
Detentions, Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department, Wisconsin, to Human
Rights Watch, January 17, 2012.

[218]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner,
New York City Department of Corrections, New York, July 6, 2012.

[220]
This data is from FY 2012. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman
Stein, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27,
2012; Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[221]
Officials at the New York City Department of Corrections indicated that they
hope to reform the management structure at the facility to allow them to impose
shorter periods of punishment. Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Dora
B. Schriro, Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, New York,
July 6, 2012.

[222]
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[223]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Bradley T. (pseudonym), Colorado, February
2012; and with George T. (pseudonym), Florida, April 2012.

[224]
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, adopted November 20,
1959, G.A. res. 1386 (XIV), 14 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 19, U.N. Doc. A/4354
(1959). Similarly, The American Convention on Human Rights (“Pact of San
José, Costa Rica”), Article 19, states, “Every minor child
has the right to the measures of protection required by his condition as a
minor on the part of his family, society, and the state.” The Pact was
adopted November 22, 1969, O.A.S. Treaty Series No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123,
entered into force July 18, 1978, reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to
Human Rights in the Inter-American System, OEA/Ser.L.V/II.82 doc.6 rev.1 at 25
(1992).

[225]
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted December
16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc.
A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976, ratified by
the United States on June 8, 1992. The Human Rights Committee has interpreted the
ICCPR’s provisions on child offenders to apply to all persons under the
age of 18. UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment 1 (Forty-fourth session,
1992), Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by
Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.1 at 155 (1994),
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/gencomm/hrcoim20.htm (accessed August 27, 2012),
para. 13.

[226]
The United States co-sponsored this provision together with Great Britain and
India, and it was adopted unanimously. See Marc Bossuyt, Guide to the
“Travaux Préparatoires” of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
1987), p. 307. The ICCPR contains three additional provisions related to
juvenile justice. Article 6(5) prohibits imposing the death penalty on persons
who committed crimes while under the age of 18. Article 10(2), subparagraph b,
mandates the separation of accused children from adults and the swift
adjudication of their cases. Article 14(1) provides an exception for cases
involving children to the general requirement that judgments be made public.

[229]
In article 37 of the CRC, the prohibition of both capital punishment and life
imprisonment without possibility of

release are included in the sub-section banning cruel,
inhuman, or degrading punishments. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),
adopted November 20, 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25, annex, 44 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49)
at 167, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989), entered into force September 2, 1990. The
United States signed the CRC in 1995 but has not ratified.

[232]
ICCPR, United States of America: Reservations, para. 5 (emphasis added). The
United States also included a reservation to the general obligation of
rehabilitation.

[233]
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted November 20, 1989, G.A.
Res. 44/25, annex, 44 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49) at 167, U.N. Doc. A/44/49
(1989), entered into force September 2, 1990. The United States signed the CRC
in 1995 but has not ratified.

[240]
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted December
13, 2006, G.A. Res. 61/106, Annex I, U.N.GAOR, 61st Sess., Supp. (No. 49) at
65, U.N. Doc. A/61/49 (2006), entered into force May 3, 2008, arts. 7(1), 14.
The United States signed the CRPD in 2009 but has not ratified.

[241]
See for example, a recent report considering the particular vulnerability of persons
with disabilities to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, including in the
context of detention. UN General Assembly, Torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment: Note by the Secretary-General, U.N. Doc.
A/63/175, July 28, 2008.

[245]
See, for example, UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment 20, Article 7,
Prohibition of torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment (Forty-fourth session, 1992), Compilation of General Comments and
General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc.
HRI/GEN/1/Rev.1 (1994); UN Committee Against Torture, Interim report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, U.N. Doc. A/63/175, July 28, 2008, para. 80; UN Committee
Against Torture, “Consideration of reports submitted by States parties
under Article 19 of the Convention: Concluding Observations of the Committee
Against Torture,” U.N. Doc. CAT/C/MAC/CO/4, November 21, 2008, para. 8.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has repeatedly recommended the
practice be banned. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child,
“Consideration of reports submitted by States parties under Article 44 of
the Convention:Concluding Observations of the Committee
on the Rights of the Child,” U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.151, October 7, 2001,
para. 41; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Consideration of
reports submitted by States parties under Article 44 of the Convention: Concluding
observations, Singapore,” U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.220, October 27, 2003,
para. 45(d); and UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Consideration
of reports submitted by States parties under Article 44 of the Convention:Concluding Observations, El Salvador,” U.N.
Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.232, June 30, 2004, para. 36(a). See also the European
Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of
Punishment (CPT), “The CPT Standards: ‘Substantive’ sections
of the CPT’s General Reports,” CPT/Inf/E(2002) 1- Rev. 2006,
Strasbourg, France, http://www.cpt.coe.int/en/documents/eng-standards-prn.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012), para. 56. Human Rights Watch has condemned
prolonged solitary confinement of adults as a function of individual
characteristics and the particular conditions of confinement. See, for example,
Human Rights Watch, Out of Sight: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in the
US, February 1, 2000, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/02/01/out-sight-super-maximum-security-confinement-us.

[254]
Letter from Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General, to Andrew J. Spano,
Westchester County Executive, November 19, 2009,
http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/Westchester_findlet_11-19-09.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012), para. 27-30 (noting that the average disciplinary
sanction imposed on young people in an adult jail was in excess of 365 days in
isolation, with the longest period being 510 days, and noting how the isolation
has contributed to the deteriorating mental health of juvenile inmates); Letter
from Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General, to Jim Doyle, Governor of
Wisconsin, May 1, 2006,
http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/taycheedah_findlet_5-1-06.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012), para. 10-13 (finding that the adult facility used
administrative segregation and observation status for inmates with severe
mental illness in violation of the Constitution); Letter from Ralph F. Boyd,
Jr., Assistant Attorney General, to Parris N. Glendening, Governor of Maryland,
Aug. 13, 2002, http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/baltimore_findings_let.php
(accessed August 27, 2012) (finding that juveniles in an adult jail were put in
isolation cells under “supermax” conditions, sometimes for as long
as several months).

[255]
The few courts to consider isolation of young people have generally done so in
the context of a range of claims related to mistreatment in juvenile
facilities. For example, R.G. v. Koller, Federal District Court of
Hawaii, 2006 (415 F.Supp. 1129 (D. Hawaii 2006)); Santana v. Collazo,
First Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, 1984 (793 F.2d 41 (1st Cir. 1984))
(holding that juvenile detention facilities in Puerto Rico failed to meet
burden of showing legitimate interest in confining juveniles in isolation for
as long as 20 days on grounds of protecting juveniles from harm, discouraging
offender behavior, and preventing escapes); D.B. v. Tewksbury, Federal
District Court of Oregon, 1982 (545 F. Supp. 896 (D. Or. 1982))
(detaining child pretrial detainees in jail under circumstances, in which there
was failure to provide work, exercise, education, recreation or recreational
materials or for privacy when showering, using toilets or maintaining feminine
hygiene, in which certain children were placed in isolation cells and in which
there was failure to provide adequate supervision to prevent harm, to allow
contact between children and their families, to provide adequate diet, to train
staff to meet children's psychological needs, to provide written rules and
grievance procedure and to provide adequate medical care, constituted
“punishment,” and, thus, violated due process clause); Gary H.
v. Leo Hegstrom, Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, 1987 (831 F.2d at
1433 (9th Cir. 1987)) (“To the extent that the court ordered due process
hearings prior to confinement in excess of 24 hours, . . . the decree was
clearly within the power of a federal court to assure minimum constitutional
standards taught by Youngberg.”).

[257]Roper v. Simmons, United States Supreme Court, 2005 (543 US __, at 19
(2005)) ( “The differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too
marked and well understood to risk allowing a youthful person to receive the
death penalty despite insufficient culpability.”); Graham v. Florida,
United States Supreme Court, 2010 (560 US __, at 23 (2010)) (“The
differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too marked and well
understood to risk allowing a youthful person to receive the death penalty
despite insufficient culpability.”); Miller v. Alabama, United
States Supreme Court, 2012 (No. 10‐9646,
slip op. at 8 (2012))(“ …[C]hildren are constitutionally different
from adults.… [J]uveniles have diminished culpability and greater
prospects for reform … [and] are less deserving of the most severe
punishments.… [C]hildren have a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped
sense of responsibility[;] … [c]hildren are more vulnerable … to
negative influences and outside pressures[;] … [a]nd … a child’s
character is not as well formed as an adult’s; his traits are less
fixed.”).

[258]
The study also found that, when compared with 97 facilities nationwide that
confidentially report data to the Council of Juvenile Correctional
Administrators Performance-based Standards (PbS) project, the ratio of
isolation incidents nationally to those in Missouri was 228:1. Richard Mendel,
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, “The Missouri Model: Reinventing the
Practice of Rehabilitating Youthful Offenders,” 2010, http://www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/~/media/Pubs/Initiatives/Juvenile%20Detention%20Alternatives%20Initiative/MOModel/MO_Fullreport_webfinal.pdf
(accessed August 3, 2012), pp. 9-10. A detailed description of the use of
isolation in juvenile facilities can also be found in Sandra Simkins et al.,
“The Harmful Use of Isolation in Juvenile Facilities: The Need for
Post-Disposition Representation,” Washington University Journal of Law
and Policy, vol. 38 (2012),
http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=wujlp
(accessed September 26, 2012).

[259]
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative suggests that best practices for
juvenile facilities include prohibiting room confinement in excess of four
hours as a response to current misbehavior and prohibiting disciplinary room
confinement in excess of 72 hours. “Juvenile Detention Alternatives
Initiative (JDAI) Facility Site Assessment Instrument,” May 2006, http://www.cclp.org/documents/Conditions/JDAI%20Standards.pdf. The American Bar Association Task Force on
Youth in the Adult Criminal Justice System proposed that room confinement for
any purpose should never exceed 10 days. American
Bar Association (ABA), Youth in the Criminal Justice System: Guidelines for
Policy Makers and Practitioners, http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/natlres/ABA%20-%20Youth%20in%20the%20Criminal%20Justice%20System%20Guidelines%20for%20Policymakers.pdf. The 1980 American Bar Association Guidelines
for Juvenile Facilities suggests that best practices for juvenile facilities
should include limiting protective custody to eight hours and prohibiting room
confinement for suicide risk, as well as limiting disciplinary confinement to 5
days for minor infractions and 10 days for major infractions.

[265]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, New York, July 6, 2012.

[266]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Deborah DePrato, Director,
Institute for Public Health and Justice, Louisiana State University Health
Sciences Center, and Associate Clinical Professor, School of Public Health,
Louisiana, June 6, 2012.

[274]
For an interesting discussion of why penal isolation should be regulated in the
same way as use of force, see Fred Cohen, “Isolation in Penal Settings:
The Isolation-Restraint Paradigm,” Journal of Law and Policy, vol.
22 (2006), p. 295; and Frank Cohen, “Penal Isolation: Beyond the
Seriously Mentally Ill,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Behavior,
vol. 35 (2008), p. 1017.

[281]
The count does not represent the number of people admitted into jail on that
day, or any other day. Rather, it is the number of people in jail on the day
that sampled jails submitted survey responses. It also provides no information
on the length of detention of inmates counted. Inmates may have been admitted
the day before the survey or may have been detained for months.

[282]
As discussed in Section I above, all youth held as juveniles are protected by
federal law mandating sight and sound separation for those under age 18.

[283]
Midyear count is the number of inmates held on the last weekday in June.

[284]
All characteristic data for 2011 adjusted for non-response and rounded to the
nearest 100.

[285]
Young people are under age 18 as of the data reporting at mid-year.

[286]
Includes youth under age 18 who were tried or awaiting trial as adults.

[287]
Others have suggested that, based on the numbers of youth prosecuted as if
adults each year, as many as 200,000 young people are at risk of being detained
in adult facilities. Campaign for Youth Justice, “Jailing Juveniles: The
Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America,” November 2007,
http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/CFYJNR_JailingJuveniles.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012); Campaign for Youth Justice, “The Consequences
Aren’t Minor: The Impact of Trying Youth as Adults and Strategies for
Reform,” March 2007, http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/CFYJNR_ConsequencesMinor.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[291]
To prevent double-counting, this estimate does not include states that have
integrated prison-jail systems. It also does not include the 142 juveniles held
in the federal prison system in 2010. Additionally, the combined estimates of
juveniles entering adult facilities do not include any juveniles detained by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Though these detainees are held in
administrative or civil detention, they are often housed in criminal detention
facilities.

[292]
The federal Bureau of Prisons does not generally house inmates under the age of
18 in its custody; therefore, additional juveniles incarcerated in adult
prisons are held only in state prison systems. However, in 2010, 142 juveniles
in the federal system were held in contract facilities. Paul Guerino, Paige M.
Harrison, and William Sabol, Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of
Justice, “Prisoners in 2010,” December 2011, http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf (accessed
August 27, 2012); Heather West, Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of
Justice, “Prison Inmates at Mid-year 2009 – Statistical
Tables,” June 2010, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/pim09st.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[293]
Specifically, we adjusted the numbers for the following facilities:

Ascension Parish Jail, LA – 50 juveniles held as adults counted as males
under age 18.

Madison County Jail, NE – 30 juveniles held as adults counted as males
under age 18.

Washington County Jail, MN – 23 juveniles held as adults counted as males
under age 18.

Scotland County Jail, MO – 2 juveniles held as adults counted as males
under age 18.

Data for Oakland County, MI was flagged as a likely
error and was removed from analysis. In five other years of surveys, the
facility reported between 10 and 25 juveniles. However, in 2010, the facility
reported 1302 juvenile male (and only 13 adult male) inmates.

[297]
Throughout the report, “solitary confinement” is used to refer to
physical and social isolation that extended for more than 22 hours each day and
lasted for one or more days. See UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, Juan Mendez, U.N. G.A. Doc. A/66/268, August 5, 2011,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012). This report does not address the practice of
holding two individuals in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch and
mental health experts have raised serious concerns about this practice as well.

[298]
This is the result of legislative reforms enacted in 2012. Colorado Revised
Statutes, Colorado Rev. Stat. Code 19-2-508(3)(c)(II).

[314]
Throughout the report, “solitary confinement” is used to refer to
physical and social isolation that extended for more than 22 hours each day and
lasted for one or more days. UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, Juan Mendez, U.N. G.A. Doc. A/66/268, August 5, 2011,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012). This report does not address the practice of
holding two individuals in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch and
mental health experts have raised serious concerns about the practice.

[328]
This report does not address the practice of holding two individual in
prolonged segregation but Human Rights Watch, mental health experts, and
advocates have raised serious concerns about the practice.

[330]
Throughout the report, “solitary confinement” is used to refer to
physical and social isolation that extended for more than 22 hours each day and
lasted for one or more days. UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, Juan Mendez, U.N. G.A. Doc.,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012). This report does not address the practice of
holding two individuals in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch and
mental health experts have raised serious concerns about the practice.

[343]
Policies in place governing youth in Department custody suggest that the
segregation of youth is regulated in the same way as the segregation of adults.
Michigan Department of Corrections, “Prisoner Placement and
Transfer,” at DD; Policy Directive 04.05.120, Michigan Department of
Corrections, “Segregation Standards,” September 2010, http://www.michigan.gov/documents/corrections/0405120_333436_7.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012), at V.9 and V.21.

[345]
Throughout the report, “solitary confinement” is used to refer to
physical and social isolation that extended for more than 22 hours each day and
lasted for one or more days. UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, Juan Mendez, U.N. G.A. Doc. A/66/268, August 5, 2011,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012).. This report does not address the practice of
holding two individuals in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch and
mental health experts have raised serious concerns about the practice.

[346]
The defense of infancy can only be invoked by youth under age 16 (and in
certain circumstances). New York Penal Law § 30. See also Remarks of Chief
Judge Lippman to the New York Citizens Crime Commission, September 21, 2011, http://www.nycrimecommission.org/pdfs/Lippman110921.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2012). There is a procedure for sentencing such youth as
“youthful offenders” in particular circumstances, though this is
distinct from treating them as “juveniles” under New York law. New
York Criminal Procedure Law § 720.

[347]
All youth between 16 and 18 are generally held in adult jails, and youth under
16 can be held there in certain circumstances. N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §
510.15(1) (McKinney2006).

[348]
The statute reads, “No person under nineteen years of age shall be placed
or kept or allowed to be at any time with any prisoner or prisoners nineteen
years of age or older, in any room, dormitory, cell or tier of the buildings of
such institution unless separately grouped to prevent access to persons under
nineteen years of age by prisoners nineteen years of age or older.” N.Y.
Correct. Law § 500-b(4). The New York City Board of Corrections, which
separately regulates New York City jails, refers to this population as
“adolescents.” NYC Board of Correction (BOC), “Variances
Granted by the Board of Correction, Minimum Standards for New York City
Correctional Facilities,” Section 1-02, “Classification of
Prisoners,” March 1989, http://www.nyc.gov/html/boc/html/rules/variances.shtml
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[349]
The various forms of solitary confinement are discussed in Section III of the
report.

[350]
Remarks of Chief Judge Lippman, September 21, 2011. This data is hard to
estimate because New York State does not publish age-disaggregated felony
arrest statistics. See New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services,
“Adult Arrests: 2002-2011,” http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/arrests/index.htm
(accessed August 27, 2012).

[352]
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with Jeffrey Hartman, Captain, Erie
County Holding Center, New York, March 2, 2012; with Dora B. Schriro,
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, New York, July 6,
2012; and with Dominick Orsino, Corrections Administrator, Orange County
Correctional Facility, New York, April 9, 2012; and letter from Randy Benedict,
Captain/Jail Administrator, Fulton County Correctional Facility, New York, to
Human Rights Watch, January 10, 2012; Letter from Sherry Stanford, Lieutenant, Lewis
County Jail, New York, to Human Rights Watch, January 7, 2012; Letter from
Jason Tripoli, Corporal, Monroe County Jail New York, to Human Rights
Watch, January 23, 2012; and Letter from David Hetman, Program/Support
Lieutenant, Correction Bureau, Rensselaer County Office of the Sheriff, New
York, to Human Rights Watch, April 19, 2012.

[353]
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with Dominick Orsino, Corrections
Administrator, Orange County Correctional Facility, New York, April 9,
2012; and with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner, New York City Department of
Corrections, New York, July 6, 2012.

[354]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Jeff McKoy, Deputy Commissioner for
Program Services, New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision,
June 28, 2012.

[355]
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Peter Cutler, Director of Public
Information, New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, July
20, 2012.

[357]
In a recent op-ed, New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision
(NYDOCCS) Commissioner Brian Fischer stated that of the 4,300 inmates in
disciplinary segregation in DOCCS facilities as of August 19, 2012, 1,400 (or
approximately one-third) live in two-man cells. Brian Fischer, “Safety
has to come first in N.Y.’s prisons,” Times Union, August
19, 2012, http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Safety-has-to-come-first-in-N-Y-s-prisons-3798859.php
(accessed August 27, 2012). This report does not address the practice of
holding two individual in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch, mental
health experts, and other advocates have raised serious concerns about the
practice. See for example, New York Civil Liberties Union, “Boxed In: The
True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons,” October
2012, http://www.nyclu.org/BoxedIn.

[358]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Jeff McKoy, June 28, 2012
(“As with any other offender, when they go to SHU they are double-celled
unless it is determined that they shouldn’t be double celled.”).

[361]
As discussed in the report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties
Union use the term “mental disability” to refer to this population.
The Department of Corrections did not provide data about what percentage of
youth subjected to punitive segregation had a mental disability. Human Rights
Watch email correspondence with Sharman Stein, Deputy Commissioner, New York
City Department of Corrections, July 27, 2012; Human Rights Watch email
correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy Commissioner, New York City
Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[362]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, New York July 6, 2012.

[363]
This data is for FY2012. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman
Stein, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27,
2012; Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[364]
This data is for FY2012. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman
Stein, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27,
2012; Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[365]
Note that the data, which is for FY2012, is not completely parallel between the
two groups. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with Sharman Stein, Deputy
Commissioner, New York City Department of Corrections, July 27, 2012; Human
Rights Watch email correspondence with Robin Campbell, Deputy Commissioner, New
York City Department of Corrections, September 26, 2012.

[373]
Throughout the report, “solitary confinement” is used to refer to
physical and social isolation that extended for more than 22 hours each day and
lasted for one or more days. UN Human Rights Council, Interim Report of the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, Juan Mendez, U.N. G.A. Doc. A/66/268, August 5, 2011,
http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/445/70/PDF/N1144570.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed August 27, 2012). This report does not address the practice of
holding two individuals in prolonged segregation, but Human Rights Watch and
mental health experts have raised serious concerns about the practice.

[377]
The various forms of solitary confinement are discussed in Section III of the
report.

[378]
Pennsylvania jails report detention data to the State Department of
Corrections. It is available at
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/document/1259638/2012_county_statistics_xls
(accessed September 26, 2012).

[387]
Inmates in PA DOC custody who are placed in administrative confinement are
subject to periodic review from the Program Review Committee, his or her
counselor, and the Unit Management Team. A qualified psychologist or
psychiatrist is to personally interview and conduct an assessment of any inmate
remaining in administrative confinement for longer than 30 calendar days. For
inmates kept further in administrative confinement for an extended period, a
mental health assessment is to be completed every 90 calendar days. Policy
DC-ADM 802, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, “Administrative
Custody Procedures,” www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/document/919463/802_administrative_custody_procedures_pdf+&hl=en&g
(accessed August 27, 2012), section (2)(D). Inmates in administrative
confinement are permitted only non-contact visits and are permitted exercise
one hour per day, five days per week. Ibid., section (3)(D)(6).